


A rider comes to the valley

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU - western setting, AU with nineteenth century history, Angst, Canon Death, F/M, Feels, Gen, Minor Character Death, OC is Jyn's son, Sadness, as plot is based on the classic movie Shane, homesteaders versus cattle barons, not sure if a happy ending is feasible, period-typical attitudes eg to race, period-typical violence although not too graphically described, range wars, set in 1868 or thereabouts, some other Rogue One characters will appear as we go on, this may get emotional don't say I didn't warn you, while others will not, yes that second / is deliberate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 50,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11724267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: He rides into town one evening in the late spring, a quiet man in a worn jacket of buckskin and clothes of soft brown cloth, on a tall black horse.





	1. Chapter 1

He rides into town one evening in the late spring, a quiet man in a worn jacket of buckskin and clothes of soft brown cloth, on a tall black horse.  He’s wirily built, almost slender, his thin face gravely serious.  He dismounts outside Merrick’s General Stores and Emporium and enters.

The storekeeper looks askance at him when he says he’s seeking work.

“Ain’t nobody hiring round here but Krennic, and all he wants is more heavies.  You a heavy, mister?”

“Depends what you mean by ‘heavy’,” says the stranger.  His English is good but accented.  “I’d say I weigh about as much as any other man my size.  Maybe something heavier about the heart.”

That sounds suspiciously like poetry.  Merrick is having none of it.  “Heavy as in heavy-handed and heavy-shooting.  If you’re a gunslinger you’ll find work and to spare at the Krennic ranch.”

“A gunslinger?”  Dark eyes regard him levelly from under the grey hat-brim.  “No, I’m not one of those.”

“I notice you don’t show a gun.”

“I do not.”  The stranger gives a single nod.  “Well, I’ll trouble you no more then, sir.  Thank you for your time.”

He’s about to go – and gun-belt or no there is something in the man’s poise and quiet that tells Merrick he is danger and trouble, all kinds of trouble, maybe even Krennic’s kind – but just the same he comes out and says it, since it’s no more than the truth: “If you head out to the Rook place, other side of Cemetery Hill, folks there might give you a bed for the night in return for some labouring work.  Heard they was looking to fix a corral and lay a load of fences, and that’s work for two.  The wife may be a feisty little thing but even she’s not got the strength to sink fence piles all day long.”

“The Rook place?”  The stranger hesitates, a silhouette in the doorway.  For a moment it looks as though he may turn away from the idea.  A strange thing for a man to consider doing, when he says he’s seeking work.  But then, it _is_ the Rook place…

Slowly he says “Thank you.  I’ll do that, then.”

**

Dusk is falling when he arrives at the last farm in the valley.  Just beyond it, the trail strikes off into the hills again. 

It seems a prosperous, homelike place.  There’s a good-sized cabin and barn, and a palisade of split logs; he sees horses on a picket, goats in a pen, a vegetable garden neatly tended; and in front of the stoop is a plough, upended.  The blade of the plough-share is out and being sharpened by a short brown man, all whipcord muscle and crow-wing hair, seated at a bench, working in the pool of light from a lantern.  He glances up once at the sound of hooves, the rider approaching in the gathering dark.  His face is calm, large eyes quietly cynical, though he speaks with a trace of a stutter.

“If you’re Orson Krennic’s latest messenger boy, you c-can tell him from me, the answer is still no.  Always will be.  He can save his people a deal of riding, the day he accepts that.”

The man in the buckskin coat dismounts and walks his horse in through the opening in the fence, towards the lamp-lit bench, and the house.  There’s more light inside, gleaming warm as gold around the closed shutters; and a high, tuneless singing comes from within, an innocent tumbling sound like the voice of an unobserved child.

“I’m not here from Krennic,” he says.

The black-haired man starts and stares.  Very slowly, as if no longer trusting his own hand, he sets down the whetstone, then the ploughshare, on the cold dirt.  He rises to his feet.  “ _Cassian_?”

The stranger pulls off his hat, and stands, suddenly awkward, his brown eyes soft and tired.  “Hello, Bodhi…”

“My god, it is you.  Oh, my god.  We thought – we thought you were dead.”

Cassian’s eyes slip past him to the window for a second.  “We?” he repeats, questioning; but his tone is that of a man who both guesses and fears the answer that will come.

Bodhi Rook takes two quick strides suddenly and embraces him.  “I c-can’t believe it!  This is wonderful news!”  And then, turning away, he calls out “Jyn!  Jyn, honey, you gotta come out here!”

Cassian takes a half step backwards as the door opens; and she is there.

He would know her anywhere, even like this, silhouetted against yellow lamplight.  Her head up, arms akimbo, her whole bearing assertive to the point of belligerence.  Fierce as an Amazon.  The memory of her hidden gentleness is precious and painful as he looks up at her standing over him like a glare.  He says her name, and sees how her body stiffens and her chin tips, at the sight and the sound of him.  Ready to fight.  Unchanged; except that now, it seems, she’s ready to fight him too.

It’s strange to see her in skirts to the floor.  She never used to have a moment’s doubt about wearing that short riding skirt at all hours and everywhere, about showing her legs practically to the knee.  Her hair is up, not hanging about her shoulders anymore.  She was scarcely more than a girl when she was his.  Now she looks what she is, a homesteader and a home-maker, and a woman grown. 

Bodhi picks up the storm lantern and the light falls across Jyn’s face.  Her jaw is tight, her lips set; but, dear God, she is still so beautiful.  It’s a shock almost beyond comprehension, seeing that face again after so long. 

Ocean-coloured gleams catch from her eyes and for a second he imagines there is a sparkle like tears.  But when she speaks her voice is unmoved.

“Cassian.  You here.  We didn’t know if you were even alive.”

She doesn’t sound angry, and he supposes that is something.  But he’s heard enough men and women speak flatly and without feeling, in these years of war and war’s aftermath.  Has spoken that way himself, many times.  Lack of affect does not mean a person is unaffected.  Quite the reverse, as a rule.

“How long have you been looking for us?”  Bodhi asks; and he does not know how to answer.  He cannot take his eyes off Jyn as she steps down from the doorway.  Her matronly dress, her apron with little stains from cooking on it, the flour on her hands.  The wedding band on her finger.

He takes a single deep breath and opts for the truth.  “I didn’t know you were here till I rode into town today.  I’ve been looking for a long time but I’d almost given up ever finding you.  Forgive me.  I didn’t come here to cause you trouble.  I’ll ride on.”

“What?” Bodhi is shocked.  “No, good God no, I won’t hear of it!  You’re not troubling us in the slightest.  Is he, Jyn?”

She’s crossed the yard and is almost beside them now, looking up at Cassian with a quiet, puzzled gaze that confuses him, because surely now she must be angry with him, surely… 

Before he can speak again there’s another footstep on the stoop, and another figure appears in the doorway.  “Mama?”

A child; he runs down into the lamp-light, all coltish skinny limbs in clothes cut-down and neatly-remade from a man’s things.  He looks up at Cassian from under a mess of wavy dark hair, half-shy and half-bold.  “Who’re you?”

“This is our old friend Cassian, from before you were born, Galen,” Bodhi says cheerfully.

The little boy is hovering just behind his mother, fidgeting and smiling past her skirts.  He’s about seven or eight, and handsome; and such eyes, clear brown and huge in a heart-shaped face.  His mother takes him by the hand, and he pulls away awkwardly and stands on one leg for a moment before grinning up at the newcomer.

“Hello, Galen,” Cassian says.


	2. Chapter 2

He looks battered, Jyn thinks; battered and broken.  All those years she’s tried to accept losing him; has hoped he’d lived, and made herself hope he’d found a happy life, back home in Mexico or somewhere even further away.  All these years she’s worked to live her own life and be a good mother to Galen, a good wife to Bodhi, and resigned herself to never seeing Cassian Andor again.  The man she’d called her true love once, and not in jest.

Was it true only then, and now no more?  Then why is her heart pounding every time he looks at her?  Why does her blood run hot with anger and sick with joy, knowing he’s alive? 

Inside her something is fluttering back to life now as she welcomes him to her home, to her table, as she serves him food she’s prepared for her family.  Why does her soul want to cry in grief at the sight of Cassian? 

He eats like a starved man.  Head down, fast, silent.  His plate scoured clean within minutes.  When she offers a second helping she can see the effort it costs him to accept politely and wait while she serves out more food to Bodhi as well. 

It’s plain enough fare; chicken pot-pie with a thick crust, potatoes boiled and dished with butter and herbs, dried beans cooked with tomato preserve and hot pepper.  But with bread and cheese on the table and a jug of milk, and apples from the store, it’s a good filling meal.  Their careful husbandry is paying off at last. 

Bodhi has worked so hard these last three years, to build their claim up from the three miles of bare valley floor they came to, to make this home, this thriving farm.  He’s endured so much, and made so many sacrifices.  She’s done her best to be a good helpmeet, but she knows he knows the truth, that he isn’t the one she really wanted, the one she dreamed of sharing her life with.  He’s always known.  He took her on those terms, like the saint he is.

So long as it was just the three of them it seemed liveable.  But now?  This changes everything and she cannot pretend otherwise, even to herself.  It shakes the ground under her feet.  It’s a bomb going up, a flash-flood roaring down on her.

_Why didn’t he ever write?  Why did he never answer my letters?  How could he not have cared enough to write even once, and yet have looked for us, now?_

She cuts up Galen’s bread and butter for him and slices his apple.  When she looks up at the men, Cassian has finished his second helping already and is watching the pot on the table as though he thinks it might get up off the trivet and run for the hills.  God have mercy, how long has it been since he ate a square meal?  His glass is empty too.  She stands up to pour him more milk and his eyes fly to her.  Sweet life, such hungry eyes.

He always could turn up a pleading gaze if he wanted to.  But this is altogether a different thing.  This is nakedly open, a look vulnerable as a prisoner condemned to the cells for life, desperate as a dying man.

She pours the remainder of the milk back into the can and sets it on the cool shelf in the north wall of the cabin.  It’s ill-omened to think of dying men.  Jyn remembers the skeleton-face of the dying; her mother twenty years ago, her father in his last weeks, four years back.  His bitter eyes, their expression cold and hard even when he tried to smile.  His voice, forevermore angry.  _You ask me to be kind?  But you’re the one who had to have your will and go your own way.  You had to marry that half-breed, had to bear his mixed-race brat.  You couldn’t have honoured your mother’s memory just this once_ …

How much angrier yet would he have been, if he’d known his grandchild was conceived out of wedlock and lucky to have the name of Rook?

Jyn realises she’s been staring down at Cassian again for a good half-minute, over her husband’s head.  When she turned back to the table he was watching her, and she fell into his eyes and was lost there.  She has been gazing down at him, and he has been gazing up at her with that desperate look, neither of them able to look away. 

She’d like to be able to convince herself it isn’t him.  But it is.  This is no imposter. 

Little Galen looks more and more like him each year. 

She’s known how alike they were for years, watching her son, but it was an abstract thought, like knowing one springtime was very like another.  She’d never thought to have the original in her sight again, never thought she’d see those eyes look up at her like this.

“Cassian,” she says, and sees him startle as if out of a dream.  His gaze drops for a moment before fluttering back helplessly to her face as she says “Help yourself if you want more pie.  It’s best finished, the leftovers don’t keep.”

Her own voice sounds strange inside her ears; smaller than usual, as if compressed by something she cannot see.  In front of her Bodhi nods, and his voice is as warm as hers is cold and tight. 

“No shame in having a good meal when you can get one.  Jyn’s pot-pie is the best, huh?”

Cassian smiles wearily; and again she can see the minute hesitation, the eagerness reined-back hard, as he reaches for the spoon and serves himself.

She comes round the table, picking up the dish of beans to bring them to him.  When she sets it down and reaches to take up the serving spoon his hand comes to rest on hers and he says huskily

“Jyn, you don’t need to wait on me, I can –“

“I’m not,” she tells him, all her thoughts going brisk and sore.  “Just making sure you’ve got enough.” 

He curls back into himself, his eyes turning dark, face still as a shield.

 _Ah, too harsh, Jyn! - why are you snapping so?  Are you a little turtle now, to bite his hand?_  

She’ll cut her own heart in twain if she does that again, if she speaks to him so thoughtlessly she has to see him bleed inside like that. 

She tries to hold his eyes, tries to tell him she didn’t mean it; to say things she doesn’t know how to say.  Once they could speak like this, with their eyes, with their hands.  Now no more, it seems.  He stares at her with a ghost’s look.  She has no notion where to find the words she needs, or the touch, to bring him the truth she will have to tell, one day.

His hand is resting on hers, for a second more than is needful.  A warm hand, and strong despite his thinness; she feels the touch of dry skin, callused fingers.  She looks away from his unhappy eyes and see that there’s a scar across two of his knuckles, but his hand is otherwise unchanged, the long fingers bony and blunt-tipped, nails square, pared-down short.  And he is touching her.  The sense memory comes so violently that her breath catches; this same hand once tipped her head up and held her while he bent to kiss her lips gently.  This same hand once cupped her breast like a chalice, once stroked her bare skin and set her shivering with excitement.

_Why did he never write?_

All this time, when hoping he’d forgotten her and found some other happiness was the best she could wish; when she’s feared learning one day that he’s been dead these five years, these seven, these ten, has known it was bound to happen, has revolted from knowing it.  All this time, she’s never forgotten the feeling of his touch.  Never stopped wishing for him to come back to her.

And now he has.

 _I’ve been looking for a long time_ , he’d said.  _I’d almost given up..._

Why did he look at all, when he’d never cared enough to write one letter?

She pulls her hand away without speaking, to cut him another slice of bread.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ll stay the night,” Bodhi says, pitching his voice consciously to sound confident of it.  He isn’t asking a favour, he’s offering one.  And it’s clear Cassian needs somewhere to stay, and a chance to find his feet.  Bodhi can provide that; where once he had to live on others’ charity, now he can be the one who gives it.  And who better to give it to?

“We don’t have a guest room, nothing so fancy, but there’s a good dry loft to the barn and we can find you a blanket and quilt.”  There’s still no answer, and he fights to keep an anxious note from his voice.  There was a time Cassian Andor was someone he went in awe of, but it’s a long time past.  He can help.  _Let me help you._   “Say you’ll stay?”

“I can’t ask that of you.”

“You aren’t.  I’m offering.  We’re offering – aren’t we, Jyn?”

He turns to where Jyn stands with her back to them, washing the dishes in a pan of hot water.  Sees her pause, sees her spine straighten for a moment before she half turns her head.  She says simply “Yes.  Please stay.”

“Please stay!” adds Galen in his sweet light voice.  He’s been sitting quiet through supper, admirably well-behaved in his slight awe of their guest.  Cassian’s haunted silences would be enough to hush a more boisterous child by far; but Galen though gentle is trusting, and his instincts are good.  He slides off his chair now and comes to Bodhi’s side.  “Papa, I could show Cassian the animals.”

Bodhi rumples his hair.  “You could.  When you do your chores in the morning.  What do you say, Cassian?  Meet three goats and two kids, a cow and a c-calf, two pigs, nine rabbits and three horses?  How can you resist that?”

“And the chickens, Papa.”

“And the chickens, of course the chickens.  How could we forget them?”

He pulls the little boy in for a hug; and when he glances up, Cassian is watching with an expression of guarded longing. 

_Well, if he hasn’t guessed already he surely soon will.  He can do that math as easily as anyone else.  But for sure, he has to see what a fine, happy boy Galen is, and maybe that will heal something in him.  He has the look of a man that needs healing._

_And if he doesn’t guess, what then? - do I tell him?  Or leave it to Jyn?_

_Why did he leave her in such desperate need, all those years ago, and never even answer a single letter?  What the hell happened to Cassian to make him do that?_

_No, I must say nothing, do nothing, till I can talk to her about it.  She may not want him to know at all. It is her choice before it is mine._

Cassian swallows hard, like a man hauling his heart back down underwater, dragging it deep and drowning it with all its cargo.  “I’d like that, Galen.  Would you teach me their names?”

“They don’t all have names,” Galen says.  “The horses do, and the cow and the goats, and the mama pig.  But the babies don’t and the rabbits and chickens don’t.  We’re going to eat them, you see.”

Cassian flinches.  It’s a strange sight in a grown man, a man who went for a soldier.  It’s not as if Galen is talking of things he’d never known.

Jyn is drying her hands. “Well, I hope you’ll enjoy the farm tour, Cassian, but all that’s for the morning.” She takes down one of the lamps from its hook on the wall, speaks to Galen cheerfully.  “Come on, young man, time for you to wash, and then you can read your story book for me before bed.”

She pats her son’s shoulder as he runs to her, and steers him from the room.  The door to the other chamber shuts behind them quietly.

There’s a silence.  The room seems darker than the loss of just one lantern should have made it.  The other two still burn bright, on the table and the mantel above the hearth.  Cassian sighs and leans back in his seat.  His face is exhausted beyond reason.

“You will stay?” Bodhi asks him.

He sighs again.  Nods, quickly, guiltily.  “I will and I – I don’t mean to be ungrateful.  It’s only that I don’t want to impose.”

“You’re an old and dear friend and you aren’t imposing, I promise.  Cassian, how can you worry about such a thing?  We are all so very glad to see you!  It’s true that Jyn doesn’t – doesn’t show her feelings so much these days but I know she’s happy to see you alive after all this time.  She’s always wondered, worried about what happened to you.  So have I.  We’ll be so very happy for you to stay with us.  Not just for the night.  As long as you  need to – to –“ ugh, he’s talking himself into deep trouble, digging a hole with his tongue.   Cassian’s eyes are more shaken by the minute.  “To - get back on your feet.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says in a small voice.

There’s another silence. 

“So, ah – where were you, before this?”

“Travelling.”  He’s looking down at his worn boots, and doesn’t say more.  Just as Bodhi is about to give in, to get up and look out some bedding for him, the sound of Galen’s voice comes through from the next room, reading hesitantly.

“King Arthur and the knight Oway - Owain?”

“Owain, that’s right,” says Jyn’s voice, a gentle murmur.

“King Arthur was holding a feast at Christmas for all the knights of the Round Table…”

Cassian speaks again, his voice sharpening, as if he’d like to cut himself free from the child’s voice.  “I’ve been travelling a long time, a long road.  I’ve seen too much; too many dark things.  Bodhi, are you sure you want me in your home?”

“…and the table was set with good things to eat…”

“We heard a bit about the war in Mexico, the French invasion, all that,” Bodhi says.  “It sounded bad.  Pretty much as bad as things here in some ways.”

“It was bad.  It was – terrible.  It’s felt like the whole world has gone insane, sometimes, these last few years.”  He doesn’t go on; he’s looking at his boots again. 

In the next room Galen says carefully “Queen Gwennie-veer was sitting with her husband…”

“I never placed you for a farmer, Bodhi.  What happened to the teaching?” 

“The boy who wanted to be a teacher had to get real.  I was a dreamer.  I had to wake up.   You know how it is.” 

“But you were good at it.  It sounds like Jyn still is, too.  I’ve been looking for you in places with a school, proper towns, not little nowheres like this.  Does this place even have a name?”

“The town?  Yes, of course! - it’s called Rogue.  And it is a proper town, good enough for us, anyway; Merrick’s store and saloon is more than we had here when we came, and the stage-coach stops three times a week.  There’s going to be a railhead coming through the Pass at Massassi by next year, too, they say.  So then we’ll have a railroad in the Llavin Valley, and you can’t call a place with a railroad nowhere.   There are other families, other children Galen’s age.  He’s growing up in a safe place and that’s all that matters in the end.  If I’ve had to short-change my dreams a little to reach that, it’s a sacrifice worth making.”

“…so Sir Owain mounted the white horse and he set off to the magical forest to look for his cousin…”

“I went back to Jedhaville,” Cassian says softly.  “I saw Galen’s gravestone, Jyn’s father.  How did he die?”

“Ah.”  It’s a hard memory.  He doesn't want to speak ill of the dead.  “He had a – a wasting sickness.  Dr Oropin said it was in his liver.  And he was bitter.  Sometimes I thought, when he got sick, that he didn’t want to live.  He – he changed; he c-could never really accept things, you know?  The world being the way it was, and - Jyn being – being the kind of girl she was, going her own way all the time, so like her mother and so unlike what he wanted.  He never forgave her for –any of it.   We moved away as soon as he was dead.”

“That old woman wouldn’t tell me anything,” Cassian tells him.  “What was her name?  The one with the –“ he gestures “the growths on her face.  Do you remember her?”

“Missus Nail?  But - she knew where we went, she knew we came to California!  The old bitch.  What good did it get her not to tell you?”

“Just mean, I guess.”

The gentle voices in the next room have fallen silent, and Jyn emerges as he’s speaking, with the lamp in her hand and a book under her arm.

“Well, we’ve got Sir Owain as far as the well in the forest of Broceliande, and he’s worn out and so is Galen,” she says.  “And so am I.  Let me find you some bedding, Cassian.”


	4. Chapter 4

When he wakes, the air is full of dust motes; the morning light catches on them in barred lines, and they gleam as they drift down from sun into shadow again. 

The straw under him is soft and clean-scented and his blankets are warm, and he can hear the peaceful sound of hens clucking somewhere nearby.  It’s hard to remember when he last slept so well, or so deeply.  

The light comes streaming through the half-open shutter of the hayloft.  When he looks that way, the first thing he sees is the hills, far off and bright; and the second is the little boy, sitting astride the post-and-paling fence in front of the barn.  Galen is fiddling with something.  He can’t quite see what, it looks like a bit of wood but it’s hard to work out why it absorbs so much of the child’s attention.  Then he raises it and puts it to his lips, and a thin, reedy squeak comes out.  Galen pouts and frowns, and goes back to picking at the tiny whistle he’s trying to carve himself.

Cassian rolls over and leans out of the hayloft.  “Is that a pipe you’re making?”

He’s rewarded with a broad smile and the boy waves his handiwork proudly.  “Yeah, it is!  Or it’s gonna be, if I can make it sound right.  It doesn’t tootle right at the moment but if I had a better knife I just know I could make it work!”

“I’ve got a good whittling knife you could borrow, if you’d like.”

“Aww!”  Galen’s face lights up.  “Yes please, mister Cassian!  That’s be so swell!”

When Bodhi comes round the corner of the cabin half an hour later they are engrossed in trying to make the little piece of hollow reed sound sweeter.  With a proper mouthpiece cut and the sounding holes nocked a little larger, it’s already giving louder notes, but the tone is still on the shrill side and Galen is still frowning. 

Cassian let him use the knife at first, but he soon passed it back, shyly asking “Please will you do it?  You know how to and I don’t.”  So at least his papa won’t have to see him wielding a blade sharp enough to take off half his hand with a single slip.  It _wasn’t_ slipping – Cassian had taken care to show him exactly how to hold the knife, how to angle the cuts away from his body.  But to a father’s eye, will it be that he sees, the dangerous tool safely handled, or the potential for a disastrous accident?

“Are you still working on your flute?” Bodhi says.  “It’s sounding good now.  Coming on quickly, too.”

He’s carrying a handful of brown eggs.  “Time for breakfast,” he tells Cassian with a smile.  “Come on inside, Jyn will be wanting to see you too.”

Though he’s sad to put Galen’s pipe down and get up, he closes his heart to the acknowledgement of feeling.  He’s been lucky to have those few minutes in the sun with the little boy, to be able to act like a normal regular friend of the family.  Trusted, liked, wanted.  Able to help. 

He follows Bodhi indoors and prepares himself to make his goodbyes.

And is pushed down gently into a seat at the table, and given a mug of coffee and a slice of buttered toasted bread.  Jyn places a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and bumps down a jug of cream.  He looks up at her and sees her taking the eggs from her husband; smiling at him, kissing him good morning, turning back to the stove.  Her slim straight back, her apron tied firmly at the waist of the practical brown pants she’s wearing today.  Jyn busy, happy, working hard; as he hears her cracking the eggs he fights against the emotions pushing themselves onto his face.  This is not his life, this is what comes with a life of real work at real things, with real commitment.  This is what they deserve, Jyn and Bodhi and their little boy.  Their beautiful open-faced child.  They dedicated themselves to achieving this.  Hard work, yes, but also a straightforward happiness, of being a family together, of seeing a future and growing towards it. 

He could never have given her this.

He starts to say “I really must –“ and Jyn glances over her shoulder and hushes him. 

“No ‘musts’ before you’ve eaten a good meal,” she says.  “Tuck into that porridge; I want to see a clean bowl.  You’re as bad as Galen for wanting to run straight out into the day before it’s even begun.  You always were, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

How can she take that kindly, mothering tone with him?  Joking, almost.  Loving.

He left her and rode away, promising her everything when he came back; and then she never wrote once.  Never answered a single one of his letters.  He stopped writing, had to stop, he was seeing, was living, such terrible things, and going such terrible ways; and then, after Oaxaca fell, when he was in prison; after that, he knew he could never reach out to her again.  Not with what he had become. 

But he’d never stopped wishing, and regretting.  And hoping that she was happy, somewhere, somehow.  As he now knows she is.

She serves him a fried egg; a wide bright thing on his plate, golden-hearted and savoury, cooked in melted butter.  There’s one for each of them.  “I’m glad the hens are laying so well again already,” she remarks to Bodhi.  “Spring’s certainly here now.  I should start getting the garden prepared for planting, get some new seed.  It’s May Day soon and the soil will be warm now.”

Her husband is nodding.  “I’ll take you into town in a day or two.  We can find out if Merrick’s got his seed corn in stock, and seed for spring vegetables; and I need to see if that wire I ordered has come in yet.  Maybe Galen would like a soda-pop for a treat?”   

“That would be wonderful, sweetheart,” says Jyn.

“Thank you, Papa!”

_Yes_ , Cassian thinks again, slicing the egg in two and shovelling it into his ungrateful mouth, _they deserve this.  I cannot blame her for having given up on me and found a better path, one that would lead to a good, safe life.  Nobody would want the road I’ve trodden._

There’s a faint sound outside, far off, and Galen looks up at the same time as Cassian.  “Mama, someone’s coming!”

She glances Cassian’s way.  “His hearing is so sharp, it’s amazing.”

Bodhi is hastily swallowing the remainder of his breakfast.  He pushes his chair back and swigs the last of his coffee as he stands up.  It strikes Cassian again how much his old acquaintance has changed, from the dreamy, musical boy, almost overwhelmed by his stutter, who only wanted to study and be a school-master, to this muscular, decisive man looking after his family.  “I better see who it is,” he says calmly as the sound of hooves draws nearer.

He goes out.  Jyn looks worried, though she turns her face downward to mask it when she notices Cassian looking at her.

He draws his own seat back quietly and rises, to move to a spot where he can see out of the window.  Bodhi is standing on the stoop now, and a trio of horsemen are approaching the gate to the property. 

He sees three tall white men, all of them well-built and well-dressed, and with good horses.  The animals all have the same brand on the left flank, the letters OK in a many-pointed star.  The men ride high, looking down at Bodhi as if at a servant; and all three are wearing six-shooters at their hips and carrying rifles in saddle-holsters. 

“That’s a good deal of weaponry for a few neighbours dropping by,” he murmurs.

He looks back at Jyn and Galen; and she shakes her head, a tiny movement.  “They’ll be from Mr Krennic’s place, I expect,” she says in a tightly controlled voice.

Galen is chopping his egg very small and piling it onto a slice of toast, oblivious to the adults exchanging a speaking glance over his head.  Cassian steps close and touches her hand quickly.  “I’ll just be out back…” 

He slips out through the rear door, and goes silently into the barn; in the space of a moment he’s up the ladder to the loft and turning out his saddlebag.

As he comes around the side of the cabin he can hear the voices in the front.  Jyn and Bodhi are standing side by side now, with Galen between them.  The little boy looks round, his face full of anxiety, as Cassian appears.

The three strangers look round, too.

“Who’s this, then, Rook?” says the leader, a pale, ill-tempered looking man with smart-slicked hair and long sideburns.

Bodhi looks around with an air of surprise.  “Who, this?  Just a friend of the family.  No-one you need worry about, Kallus.”

“Just a friend?” queries the oldest of the men in a surly tone.  “Seems mighty strange for you suddenly to pick up friends out of nowhere.  What’s your name, Mister?”

“Andor,” Cassian says, shifting one hand casually to his hip.  To the navy revolver holstered there, hanging from a leather gun-belt bright with old silver.

“And who are you, then, _Andor_?”  The sleek-haired man Kallus again, his tone stinging with contempt.  “You another of Rook here’s Injun brothers?  You don’t sound like an American, that’s for sure.”

“I’m a friend of the family.  An old friend, come to visit.  That’s all.”

“Well, I hope you’ll see your way to talking some sense into your _old friend_ ,” says Kallus, cold.  “Cos he don’t seem to have enough of it to take proper care of his little lady and his boy here.  Well, good day to you, ma’am,” and he touches his hat to Jyn with a humourless smile. “Come on, boys, let’s be off home.  Mister Rook and his _friend_ don’t have the time of day for us.”

They ride off, into the morning heat. 

Jyn is holding Galen’s shoulders, her hands tight in his shirt.  Bodhi stands beside her shaking with rage.  “Three of them , against the one of me, and a woman and child?  Sons of – damn them!  Damn Krennic!  We will not be moved!” He glares after the receding horsemen; shouts angrily “We own this land!” 

“Bodhi, hush,” Jyn says in a tight voice.

“We are not abandoning our claim!”

Cassian comes round to the doorway and steps up onto the stoop again, beside them.  For the first time since Kallus and the others appeared they all turn to look at him; their faces change as they take in the gun, and the way his stance has altered now he wears it. 

“Bodhi, Jyn,” he says “I think you’d best tell me what’s going on here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know he isn't a Rogue One character but he fits the bill (even to a similar name - the original character in "Shane" is called Calloway) - so please forgive me introducing Kallus into this!


	5. Chapter 5

“You’ll hear the same story all over the west,” Bodhi says bitterly.  “It’s caused bloodshed in more than one place already and I’ve no doubt it will again.  Maybe here, even.”

“Hush, don’t say such things.” Jyn seems more calm, but her face is pale.  “You’ve worked so hard to stop the situation getting worse.  We’ve no reason to suppose it will come to violence if we can all just keep calm.”  She draws Galen back into the house.  Her husband follows, still speaking.

“No reason?  You heard them, Jyn!  An ultimatum, that’s what it was!  Come around to Krennic’s way of seeing things, persuade the rest of the town likewise, or face the consequences!”  Bodhi sits down heavily at the table, pushing his plate with the unfinished remains of his meal aside.

“Who is this Krennic?” Cassian keeps his face thoughtful and his voice quiet.  He’s conscious all the time of the little boy with them.  Is Galen even aware of what is being threatened here?  Certainly his mother and father are.  Jyn looks almost ill with anger and fear.

He doesn’t want to cause her any more distress; he schools his face to look calm, as though barely bothered by the confrontation.  The six-shooter at his belt will be enough of a weight on her heart.  Time was, when she’d been the one getting into fights, he had been almost as gentle a man as Bodhi.

Time was.

“Are you gonna whip them, Papa?” Galen chirps.  “Is Mister Cassian gonna help you teach them a lesson?”

“No, Galen, that’s not what we’re going to do.” Bodhi’s face has fallen at the excitement in the little boys voice.  

Cassian says carefully “I just happened to remember to put on my gun this morning, that’s all.  I haven’t come here to whip anybody and nor has your Papa.” He pulls out a chair for Jyn but she steers her son into it instead.  She doesn’t look at him; starts picking up the breakfast dishes quickly. 

“So who is Krennic?” he asks again.  “I heard the name in town as well as here.  Seems like he’s a bully.  Is he another farmer?”

Bodh shakes his head.  “Land manager is all.  Though the way he acts, you’d think he was the king of California.  Have you heard of Empire Holdings?  Big outfit, an Austrian guy called Siegfried Palpatine owns it.  He was one of the first white men out here, thirty-some years ago.  He’d say he was taming the place but I’d call it more of a land-grab.  He owns great tracts of good land all over; getting on for half the Llavin Valley is his and a big chunk of Dutch Valley, here in Rim County, and most of Corus County, across the ranges yonder, and almost all of Coreville, the county town, too.  And that’s not the half of it.  Empire has property spread across half the State; a holding here, a holding there, all Palpatine’s people.  They run cattle through it all, beef cattle.  Drive ‘em to the railheads twice a year, ship ‘em off to Chicago for slaughter and start again.  They need open range land, and land managers who can get it for them.  They call us sodbuster and dirt-eater and a lot of other names besides.  We’re in their way and they don’t care that we’ve bought our claims fair and square from the government.”

Cassian sighs; it is indeed a familiar story.  “So they try to buy smallholders like you out?”

“Buy us out, bribe us out, scare us out, they don’t care how it’s done so long as we abandon our claims.  Empire Holdings wants the land, don’t mind the details of getting it.  Coreville tried to unite and take a stand, and Palpatine took it like a personal challenge.  That was less than two years ago.  He came in with money and men, pressure from both fronts, never letting up.” Bodhi shrugs expressively.  “Almost every business in Coreville belongs to Empire now; and all the land thereabouts? – nothing but beef.”   He gestures, a wide sweep of his hand that seems to say _far as you can see_ …  “Orson Krennic is just their local man here in the Valley.   They bought the First Star ranch about six months ago from old man Knight after his son died, put Krennic in there straightaway.  He’s been trying to get us all out ever since.  Started with the Pamlo sisters, figured no-one would stand up for two black folks, I guess.  Well, he figured wrong!  We’re sticking together, the Rogues, we’re not going to let him and his thugs harry those two brave girls out of house and home.  This town was well-named, Rogue, most of us are misfits of one kind or another.  Immigrants, negroes, mixed marriages –“ he glances up at Jyn, who is busily scrubbing out the oatmeal pan now, with her back turned “- There’s a guy they pick on a lot, old Saw.  He’s already an easy target, seeing as he’s a cripple, and besides that he’s a diehard old soldier who won’t accept the war is over.  He’ll up and pick a fight with anyone who has the smallest breath of a southern accent.  He’s so paranoid he’s near crazy.  We keep an eye on him though, see him safe.  Can’t say as many of us exactly _like_ the man, he’s such a cussed old coot, but we stick by him ‘cos we stick together round here…”  He’s getting heated; he reins himself in with an embarrassed mutter of “I c-could go on about this all day, I’m sorry!”

“So does this mean you’re not being targeted especially?  It’s the same for everyone?” Cassian asks.

Bodhi hesitates, and into the tiny pause Jyn speaks up.  “No, it’s not the same for everyone!” She sets down the pot and turns, holding a wooden spoon upraised like a weapon.  Her voice has gone from anxious to hard.  “They _are_ targeting us – they’re targeting _Bodhi_ – much more than the rest.  _Different_ than the rest.  They know he’s an educated man and they reckon he’s a leader.  A rallying point.”

“I’m not,” Bodhi says quickly, spreading his hands on the table.  “I’m not any of those things.”

“Why do you sell yourself short?” Jyn speaks angrily, waving the spoon for emphasis.  “Everyone round here looks to you as the spokesman.  You’re the best speaker, the best reasoner, the one who can argue a point best.  You’re the only one who’s got a hope of understanding what’s said if they get lawyers involved –“

“But they _aren’t_ getting lawyers involved,” Bodhi says.  “Krennic doesn’t use that tactic.  I think we can say that with certainty now.  He uses bribes and threats, he’s a bribe-and-threat man!”

Cassian looks from him to Jyn, and then across the table to where Galen sits, wide-eyed and silent, listening.  It’s their right to have this conversation now; but he wishes it weren’t happening in front of the boy.  The bright smile of the early morning has vanished.  _He’s just a child, he has the right to have sunny mornings and friends, and a bamboo whistle, and a peaceful life_ …

He sighs again.  “So which was it these guys were offering you, today?”

“Bribes.  Krennic wants me to work for him.  It’s a good offer, I’ll say that for him.  Decent pay, we’d be relocated to a place on the First Star ranch, fine little two-story cottages they’ve built for their people.  He takes care of his men.  But it’s a matter of principle.  It’s not just about looking out for myself, it’s looking out for all of us.”

“And if it comes to threats?”  Cassian is watching Galen again, and Jyn moves towards him, taking up a stance behind her son’s chair, with the heavy wooden spoon held up as though she’ll fight all comers with it.

“We resist,” she says.  Her eyes are alive with that fearful anger once again.

The squabbles and battles that Jyn Erso ran into once like a game are all-too real, all-too serious, now.  She’s a wife and mother now, and no longer looks so eager for the fight; but it seems Jyn Rook still has a touch of the warrior in her.

He remembers her Amazonian defiance of her father; and how she laughed afterwards.  That was the day he called her _grey-eyed Athene_ , and made her smile; and she came into his arms…  Jyn used to laugh so much.  And he would hold her when she laughed.  She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. 

She still is.

There’s a smile rising in him, something like joy surfacing unbidden at the sweetness of the memory.  He kills it.  He’s not her man anymore.  Not a fit man for a woman like her, even if she were free; nor for any good woman.  He fixes his eyes back on Bodhi. 

His old friend is nodding.  “That’s right.  But not by fighting.  We stand our ground.  We show them that little people can stick together.  Krennic won’t manage to divide and rule us, the way Empire did in Coreville.”

“Was that the same guy, in Coreville?”

“No,” Jyn says.  “Coreville fell to a man named Tarkin, one of Palpatine’s oldest buddies from the way-back days and the Indian wars.  Everyone says he’s  terrifying; cold, doesn’t care who gets hurt, how many people die, so long as he gets what he wants.”  She suddenly seems to see the spoon she’s holding over her son like a truncheon.  She sets it down quietly on the table and instead bends to wrap both arms round Galen and cuddle him close.  He looks away, going rigid for a second with embarrassment before leaning back against her and letting himself be hugged.

“So these men, just now – they were what?”

“A reminder.  They told me Krennic’s a patient man but the offer wouldn’t stand forever.  Last time, it was just Kallus.  Sending him with back-up makes the point just a bit firmer.  And now they’ll report that we have back-up too.  I appreciate you meant well, Cassian, showing yourself, showing your gun.  But to Krennic, this will look like a challenge, and I’m not sure we’re ready for that yet.”

“In a war, you can’t always choose when and where the fight begins,” Cassian tells him sadly.  “Only try and influence how it ends.”

“We need to be ready to fight, when that time comes,” says Jyn, bellicose and frightened.  “Whenever things start.  We mustn’t give in to their terror tactics.”

Galen looks ready to cry, and it breaks Cassian’s heart to see the little boy so unhappy.  God knows how many times he’s had to listen to his parents talk about this.  Words like war, like fight, like terror.  A war just fought in this land, and here’s another one already brewing; it must seem that way to a child.  A world where there will never be peace.

Bodhi is shaking his head.  His eyes are distressed and angry.  “I don’t want things to come to a fight if we can find a way to avoid it.  We’re outgunned and outmanned, it’s unrealistic to imagine we could win if it comes to that.  We need to have a talk for once that doesn’t have men with guns hanging over it.  Empire have to learn that they can’t just dictate to everyone like this!  They’ve had their own way for so long, they’ve got used to just throwing their weight around and seeing the world crumble.  It’s time someone talked some sense into them.”

Galen bites his lip.  His mother is still hugging him from behind, but she’s watching her husband and she can’t see his stricken little face.  Cassian wants to wrap his arms round them.  To gather them both in, to hold her anger and his misery, and all of their fear, and protect them with all he has.  _That’s all I’m fit for, after all.  This wreck of a life I’ve lived has made me good for one thing; I can still be another body, to shield the innocent._

Bodhi looks round the table, at his fearful son and belligerent defensive wife, and at Cassian watching impassively.  He sighs in obvious frustration and stands up, drawing himself together into a resigned calm.  “Come on, we still have a full day’s worth of chores.  Cassian, can I get your help with some of the heavy jobs?  We’d love for you to stay – I’m sure I speak for Jyn too – and another pair of hands around the place would be appreciated, no matter what.  What d’you say?”

“Please stay, Mr Cassian?” says Galen, very small.

He can’t refuse.  He nods, and makes himself smile. 

When he looks up at Jyn, she meets his eyes with a look of inexpressible sadness, before nodding too.  “Thank you,” she says.


	6. Chapter 6

He’s staying.

Jyn cannot tell if it’s a dream come true or a nightmare.  Every hour seems to bring some new fluctuation in her emotions, and she feels sick for half the day, seeing her husband and her former lover together at every turn.  Cassian, helping haul logs and split and cut the wood for the new corral.  Cassian digging holes and helping to sink and fix the posts.  Cassian, not dead;  Cassian here, passing by the window, speaking in a low voice to Bodhi, making a quick joke to Galen; working all day, till he’s running in sweat; working without a word of complaint, till his hands shake with exhaustion.  Cassian taking a basin of water outside to wash himself before eating at their table. 

Cassian jumping like a man slapped when Galen drops his reading book on the floor behind him, springing up from supper and reaching for his hip, quick as a rattler; then going quiet and apologising as though it were he who’d made such a crash. 

Cassian going quietly to the hayloft to sleep that night.

How can she be comfortable with this?  It’s insane; to have the two men who have known her in her body, both of them here working together like this.  They were all friends once, yes; but that was so long ago, and so much has passed since then.  Things can never be the same, surely Bodhi must see that?

And yet, if the dispute with Krennic and Empire Holdings comes to a head while he’s here, at least there’ll be one person standing by them who knows how to shoot.  Because it’s horribly clear that Cassian does.  There’ll be one person here who isn’t just a farmer with a shotgun and a nervous hand, or an angry woman screaming her defiance and hitting out.

She has to try and make it work, somehow.  For her family’s sake.

He rides into town, the second day, to buy himself some working clothes and pick up nails and a delivery of wire from Merrick’s store.  He promises to get a bottle of strawberry-flavoured soda-pop, a treat for Galen, as well.  Jyn watches him go, and watches her little boy watching, too, sitting astride the fence, playing three merry notes over and over on his new bamboo pipe.

It’s unnerving how utterly Galen has taken to the new arrival in the household.  He’s thrilled by his new friend and delighted with every single thing about Cassian.  The likeness between them lurks like a troll in her thoughts each time she sees them together.  No-one has ever doubted Galen is Bodhi’s son, after all, with his tan complexion and dark hair and eyes, and his heart-shaped face that is more like hers.  But seeing him beside Cassian, everything looks different, and she cannot help but remember the young lad who first arrived in Jedhaville all those years ago, just a few years older than Galen is now. 

And if she can see it, what if others can…

Jyn cannot face the possibilities, if that were to happen.  To be known for a woman who’d palm her by-blow on an innocent husband; even here in Rogue, that would surely be seen ill. 

How thin the thread by which her safe life hangs, now this bright blade, this man she once loved, is here.

No matter if she’s in danger, at risk of shame; she deserves it, she can’t deny the truth.  But she must protect her son, no matter what.

She calls Galen in from watching for Cassian, and gets him settled him at the table with a pencil gripped in his fist and a page of arithmetic problems.  He concentrates furiously, his little lower lip sticking out and a tiny frown between his brows.  So like his father.  Her heart is crying at that picture of the boy Cassian, doing the exact same thing at her parents’ table, so long ago, so very long ago now…  Surely he must see it too; and surely he must love Galen, for how can anyone not?  Yet it cannot be, it cannot be permitted to be. 

Surely she can be allowed to hope that they won’t all be torn apart by this?  Surely Rogue’s little community will not turn against her when they’ve all stuck together through so much?  Surely she can hope that old friendship will reassert itself, and old love be enough to sweeten the years of loss between? – enough to sweeten the loss and soften the knowledge, of all the things that cannot be…

She spent most of yesterday working over the vegetable garden, weeding and preparing the soil, digging out the last of the over-wintered root vegetables and the onions.  It was good to have some steady task, to keep her thoughts occupied.  Nightmares toss through her mind like storm-clouds every time she stops thinking. 

Now she sits at the table and checks through all the seeds saved from last year, keeping an eye on Galen as he works down his page of math.  With two people who’d planned to be teachers raising him, at least her boy will be literate and numerate.  He’ll have the opportunities that can bring.  He will have a good life; he’ll have safety, stability, freedom, hope, he’ll have every tiny advantage she can claw for him, if it kills her.  Else what has this all been for? 

He’s still puzzling over the last few questions, counting surreptitiously on his fingers, lips moving silently.  She takes a second sheet of paper to make a list of the things she needs to buy next time she’s in town.  Seeds, sewing supplies, salt and sugar…

Galen looks up with a jolt and his eyes shining.  Next moment Jyn hears the soft sound of hooves and horse harness. 

“Mister Cassian is back, mama, please may I go and talk to him?”

“You don’t have to call him _Mister_ all the time, dear, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind just _Cassian_ …”

“Please may I go and talk to him?  _Please?_   He -he can help with my math maybe?”

Of course; the soda-pop.  She can’t help smiling.  “Go on then, sweetheart.”

He thumps down from the table and dashes outside.  The little frown is all gone, just a happy beam of anticipation on his face.

Jyn doesn’t follow.  She’s counted and sorted all her old seeds and re-wrapped them in the twists of paper they were stored in.  Plenty of beans, lima and dwarf climbing and runners, and plenty and to spare of fat peas; and the marrow seeds look sound, and the pumpkins and squashes, big and flat like smooth ochre pebbles.  But some of the tomato seeds are so shrivelled she’s not sure if they can be viable anymore; and the spinach beet and lettuce seeds look weevilly.  She picks up Galen’s abandoned pencil, noticing that he’s still chewing the end despite all her efforts to teach him better.  Begins adding to her list.  Carrots, onions, peppers, and tomatoes for salads and for canning; all the salad stuff, cucumbers, lettuces and arugula; musk melon if they can get it, and sunflowers and linseeds if possible.  That makes a fair amount, before she’s even come to the sundries.  Add on a paper of needles and several colours of cotton, and sugar, pickling salt, peppercorns, and writing paper and another pencil for Galen; and can they afford to order him another reading book?  All this is going to add up, yet all of it is needed.

She’s still thinking and jotting notes when she hears his voice outside, excited and awed.  “ _Wow!_   Are you alright, Cassian?  Don’t it hurt at all?”

 _Is he alright_?  Jyn is on her feet and out of the cabin on the instant.  What on earth – surely no-one would – he’s so new in town, why would anyone hurt – but if he met some of Krennic’s people –

Cassian is tying up his horse as she reaches the door.  Galen bounds around beside him like a colt, clutching a glass-stoppered bottle of Monique Merrick’s best vibrant pink soda.  Everything looks quite normal and calm; she can see the two big reels of fence wire hanging one on either side of his saddle, and Cassian is wearing a plain stone-coloured shirt and denim work pants, new and practical.  His buckskin jacket is a rolled up bundle on the saddle-bow.  He looks down at Galen with a grin and she sees them both in profile; and there’s the likeness again.  Fear and love tug at her mind, her heart, fingers of emotion pressing home hard on all the tender places in her.

“I’m fine, Galen,” Cassian is saying; but then he straightens and turns, and she sees it at once.  Split lip, bruised cheekbone; and on the front of the new shirt there’s a spot of blood, and a damp patch as though something was spilled on him. 

He flinches slightly as their eyes meet, and she wonders what is written in her face, to make him look so.

“What happened?  _Cassian_!”

 She reaches him at a run; half-raises her hand to his bruises, and pulls it back quickly.

There’s a pungent smell of liquor drying in the sunshine.  Surely he hasn’t been drinking?

“What _happened_?” she repeats, scared and angry.

“I met that man Kallus and some of his friends and they bought a drink for my shirt.  It’s nothing, it’ll wash out…”

“You’ve been fighting? –“ her hand moves again towards his face and the marks of blows.  She reins herself in.  _I must not touch him, I must not let myself…_

Behind her there’s a loud pop! as Galen opens his treat, and he exclaims gleefully “It’s so bubbly!”

“I didn’t start it, Jyn, I promise you.  I tried to talk him down but he wanted to start something.  If a man hits me I have to hit back, you must see that.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”  He looks amazed to hear her say it; but surely he must have seen how they’re trying to keep things calm, to avoid stirring up any more trouble?  “Things are bad enough already with Krennic’s people.”

“It’s only me.  I’m used to it.   And it was just a couple of punches thrown, nothing serious.”

“I bet you hit him good, didn’t you, Cassian?”  Galen is jubilant.  His tongue is already pink from the soda.  “I bet you knocked him right down on the floor!”

She’s angry with Cassian and with herself, with Bodhi for sending him alone, even with her son though his delight is utterly innocent.  She doesn’t want to be angry, seems like she’s an angry woman so often these days; but then she is, she is.  She was the one who got in fights once, it’s true, but that was a long time ago and this is _different_ …  “I’ll decide what’s serious, Cassian – we need to keep the peace here, not take any provocation to break it!  Bodhi’s worked so hard to bring everyone together to stand up as a community and things like this risk smashing that before we’ve even got started!  He’s out right now, calling on all the other farms, arranging a meeting for tonight to talk about how we can take a stand against Empire and their thugs!  The last thing we need is for them to be able to say any of us is causing trouble!”

“I didn’t cause any trouble,” Cassian says, low and sad-sounding.  He looks at her with worried eyes.  Can’t he see how she’s changed, how she’s _had_ to change?  “I promise you, Jyn, I didn’t start anything.  All I did was face it when it came.”

“We need to keep the peace!” she repeats, angry with him and with herself.  Hell and damnation.  She’s always angry.  Yes, she would like to fight, Christ knows she would.  Everything feels better when you fight against what traps you.  But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, and she has had to learn this lesson! 

He never had to; he’s never had to slide all of his dreams out under the door of life and leave them to die in the cold because _your child comes first_.  She has had to; and she’s had to give up fighting; Bodhi has worked so hard and explained so many countless times to everyone; she owes it to him, to her goddam husband, the man who loved her no matter what, the man she goddam well loves, she owes it to him to _keep things peaceful_. 

And she still wants to fight. 

She’s breathing as hard as a runner and her jaw feels tight, as though she’s the one who’s been slapped.  And somehow the wrong words come out, something that cannot be unsaid, because she’s so angry that the truth is all she can hear, even though she’s speaking in front of Galen and she’s tried so hard, she’s tried… “If we end up fighting it needs to be because we had no choice!”

Cassian’s face goes from puzzled to mute, and he doesn’t reply.  Christ.  Christ!  She’s meant to be keeping the peace, not talking like that.  Dear God, forgive me, what have I become…

She hurries Galen inside.  He hasn’t noticed a thing; he’s still laughing about the bubbles in his nose. 

Behind her in the yard Cassian begins slowly to say something – it sounds like her name, but she hardens her hearing and disciplines herself.  _Ignore him, let him go as he let you go.  He has no claim on you or yours._

Jyn sits down again, with her hands shaking, and tries to make sense of her little list, and work out what all these necessities will cost.


	7. Chapter 7

Come evening, when the others arrive after supper, Cassian stays with them at first.  There’s a spring storm blowing in down the valley, heavy rain gusting in the wind as the evening settles to darkness.  When Hiram Raddus arrives his grey hair is so wet he looks sleek as a fish.  The Pamlo sisters come next, side by side in their wagon, Tynnra driving while Taris holds a tarp over their heads; and the eldest Antilles boy rides in right after them, making sheep’s eyes at Tynnra Pamlo as usual.  He’s here, he says, to speak for his father and his family.  Eighteen years old and filled with undisguised pride to be a man.  He cuts another glance at his dream girl and it’s impossible to miss the tiny smile they exchange.

Jyn has made a couple of pots of coffee and everyone accepts a cupful gladly; the rain and wind are enough to make the night unseasonably cool.  From outside, the sound of hooves and wheels comes again and she opens the door to find Noah Jebel, glowering miserably as usual, with rain running out of his beard.  Behind him stands Saw Gerrera, leaning heavily on his cane.  The old man hooks up a rare smile for her; it would seem he’s in a warm mood today, despite the weather.  Perhaps he’s enjoyed goading Noah as they made their way over here; Jebel looks sour enough for it.  Everyone knows Saw’s tongue can be mighty sharp, and Noah’s temper can veer sideways in an instant.

But with them both here, that’s every farmer in the valley, all of them gathered together and packed in her little cabin.  She serves up the last of the second pot of coffee and washes it.  By the time she’s done, Saw is bristling at some joke from the Antilles boy trying to impress Miss Pamlo, and Jebel is arguing with the Swede, something about Krennic’s man Kallus at the store yesterday.  Jyn says briskly “I’ll leave you ladies and gentlemen to it then, my little boy may know how to put himself to bed but he won’t go to sleep without his bedtime story.”

They’ll bicker and wave their pride at one another, and show-off in front of those two pretty girls, for a good few minutes yet before they get down to anything like real business; and then they could argue for an hour or more before coming to an agreement.  She hasn’t the patience for it.  Bodhi will do what’s best for his family and she has faith in him.

She slips out past Cassian.  He’s sitting near the back, with his head down, not speaking; neither in the meeting nor out of it. 

In the little box-room Galen is sitting up in bed in his nightshirt, and she gets him to settle properly, and tucks him in.  She picks up his book of Arthurian tales.  “How about I read you the next bit, instead of you reading it to me, for a change?  Would you like that?”

“Yes please!  You read much quicker than me, mama.  More story!”

“Hush, then, dearest.  Now, where were we?” Jyn turns up the lamp a little and opens the big old storybook.  She turns the pages, finds the spot where they left their current story.  Last night Sir Owain had been busy having knightly exploits, with a lot of jousting and winning at archery and sword fights and chess games, and a few courageous slayings of dragons and trolls.  He’s about to go home to find his beloved Laudine believes him dead.  Jyn is smiling as she reads how the lady is so hurt and angry that she banishes him from her side and orders him to prove he has been loyal in his long absence.  _Good for her._

From time to time the voices in the next room are raised, ringing sharp against the steady soft sound of the rain.  She tries not to eavesdrop, but when they shout it’s hard not to listen.  It’s chiefly Saw, of course; arguing, disagreeing, finding fault and picking fights.  Young Reginald Antilles is not helping, mocking him with jokes and then with merry tunes on his harmonica; and one of the sisters is laughing and encouraging the boy, when she could have quieted him with a single look.

She can’t blame the two of them for being tempted into flirting.  Young Wedge is handsome and witty, and makes his admiration clear; and Saw is a tired old paranoiac and something of a bully besides, a man who tries to make the sisters feel guilty for preferring the good-looking white boy to his crippled self.  But there are serious matters to be debated tonight, and this tomfoolery distracts everyone, and shortens tempers all round.  Seems she was right to decide not to stay in the meeting.  She would have been wanting to knock heads together by now.

The third time the voices rise in anger she hears Cassian’s name spoken, and pretty fast after that things get to yelling once more; then there’s a bump as the main door of the cabin is opened and shut again quickly.  Someone has left the gathering. 

Galen sits up in bed, wide-eyed and worried.  The storybook sinks into her lap as she looks over at the window.  The door was closed, not slammed; shut firmly but quite sensibly.  She wants to see who it is that’s leaving.

“What’s happening, mama?  Why are they angry with Cassian?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.  I’m sure he hasn’t done anything wrong.”  Why she’s defending him to her boy she can’t say; a few hours ago she almost shouted at him herself, yet it matters painfully to her that there should be no ill-feeling between Galen and Cassian.  “Maybe he just didn’t have anything to say to Papa’s friends.”

She’s still looking out of the window.  The shutters are open though the glazed window itself is shut.  The lamplight illuminates the first few yards outside, the yard full of puddles and the rain shining bright as a cascade.  A lone figure comes into view; it’s Cassian, heading to the barn.  The light catches on his clothes, gleams on his wet face and hair.  He glances round, looks in at the window; stops in his tracks for a moment.  She can’t put a name to the emotion in his eyes.  Rain running down his face.  It’s as if his soul is utterly naked and yet he’s utterly guarded too; it’s the look of a spy betrayed, a man facing the end of everything, holding all feeling back even from himself in order to die calmly.

She stands up, impulsive, wanting again to reach for him and knowing she cannot, and should never wish to.  Lays a hand on the shutter, a hand on the chilly glass.  Sees him see her, and see Galen sitting up in bed behind her.

Very softly, muffled by the glass and the rain, he says “Good night, Jyn.  Goodnight, Galen.”

“Goodnight, Cassian,” she says, and watches him as he looks for a moment more and then turns to go.  He moves out of the pool of rainy lamplight, and his figure is no more than a shadow; a shadow which walks quietly down the side of the cabin and goes into the barn to sleep without a light.

“But _why_ are they angry with him?  Cassian didn’t do anything wrong, _did_ he?” demands Galen from his bed.  “He only hit that man ‘cos he was hit first, right?” 

So he was listening to the argument too.  Jyn sighs.  She thinks of the cut on Cassian’s lip that afternoon, the blood scabbing like rust in his beard, the bruises purpling above.  His eyes, so hurt at her reprimand and her bottled anger; so lonely just now, looking in from the night and the rain.

“I’m sure he did the right thing, honey,” she says.  And then, because sooner or later she will have to say it, before she is too haunted to let the words out: “Galen, dear, don’t get too fond of Cassian.  He’ll be moving on, someday.”


	8. Chapter 8

It would have been good, Bodhi thinks, to have gotten more agreeing done, and less arguing, last night.  But at least everyone came to the meeting; even old Saw, even the Pamlo girls, who once had protested that these things were men’s business and they would rather not be involved.  And for all they all may have bickered a little and some things may have been said that were better left unsaid, none of it was so harsh as to make a real rift, and the plan going forward is still to stick together, to try and stand their ground.  Even Jebel agreed, though he’d taken some persuading.

Saw had argued that he’d carry on as he pleased, of course; he’d do as he wished and be damned to anyone trying to choose safer options for him.  That was hardly unexpected; the day Saw made a cautious choice was a long way off.  His pride was bigger and stronger by far than his war-battered body.  Maybe he’d come round on his own, left to think things through, with no-one playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic behind his back on the harmonica and laughing.

In the meantime, Saw aside, the rest of them had agreed that they weren’t going to go anywhere alone, not into town, not anywhere off their own land. 

Cassian had reported that the new seed corn and seed wheat had been delivered at Merrick’s.  And there was May the First to plan for, the Raddus’ little springtime party they held every year.  Which meant a group visit to Rogue and Merrick’s Stores was in the offing.  And then the decision had been made that if the rain stopped, today would be the day for that. 

He needed to think of a present to buy for Jyn, too.

Seven years married, next week.  More than seven, since that dreadful day she’d confided in him and he’d done the only thing he could think of to help, and offered to make an honest married woman of her.  Considering that was its beginning, and how much they’d had to weather - her father’s anger and his miserable death, and the sadness of accepting there’d be no more children after Galen - yes, all things considered, they’d had about as happy a marriage as any man and woman could hope for.

But Jyn is struggling just now, he can tell.  Having Cassian here is just one more burden when she’s already torn between the urge to fight like a hellion and the desperate need for them all to have peace.  There was  a time her fighting side would have won; but she’s grown steadier for the years of hard work and its hard-won fruits; she knows now how much more you can harvest if you stand your ground and are patient. 

He wants to show her how right she is, to stand steady, hold on for peace.  How much he will always love and respect her.  She’s grown into this woman she is now, for him and Galen, and even now sometimes she fights her own nature for them. 

Perhaps it’s mad to ask Cassian to stay with them.  But Krennic’s threats scared the last two hired hands off, and to have someone who’ll stick by you no matter what is important in times like these.

The way Jyn sticks by him, and he by her.

And thinking of that, he’s glad again, remembering how it’s been with them these seven years, together through happy days and sad. 

Well, they’re all going into town today, the whole lot of them, all the farmers; a proper show of unity.  Even Saw agreed to take part this time.  Krennic’s men may lounge about in Merrick’s saloon at all hours, sipping his Tennessee whiskey and trying to ruffle his Missus’ cool; but Anton and Monique Merrick know it’s not the Empire boys but the farms in the valley, and the farming folks working them, that are the mainstay of their custom.  They’ll insist on keeping the peace; they’ll send word a hundred miles to the nearest Federal Marshall, sooner than allow these flickers of conflict to grow further, much less blossom into an outright range war like some of the feuds he’d heard of, in Texas and points east…

It’s a fine morning.  The rainstorm had blown itself out by dawn and the whole valley looks newly-washed.  The low foothills and bright far-off mountains draw a pristine line against the sky.  Bodhi hitches up the pair to the wagon and boosts Galen up the side of a wheel to sit on the driving bench and keep watch on them. 

As the last farm before the wild trail and the hills, it’s for them to set off first.  They’ll pick up Hiram and Profondita Raddus and their boys, and then work south along the creek towards the Antilles place, then sweep by to collect the Jebels and the Pamlo sisters, and old Saw last of all. 

With all those womenfolk confederating together, and more than half a dozen children coming along too, the Merricks should do a rare trade in pop and candy today, and get a fair few orders for hair-ribbons and pins.  He remarks as much to Jyn when she emerges from the cabin with her freshly-washed hair spread over her shoulders, still drying. 

She gives him that withering look he’s so fond of.

“Hair-ribbons?  Maybe.  And home-medical supplies, and findings for sewing and mending, and whetstones for our kitchen tools, and pots and pans, and sugar and vinegar and peppercorns and cinnamon quills for bottling and pickling.  And seed for our vegetable gardens, and spades and trowels and rakes and hayforks.  Don’t forget all _that_ when you’re talking about the little ladies’ needs, _dear_.”

He laughs.  He loves teasing her when she ruffles herself at him warmly like this.  “It’s early in the year for bottling, surely?  It’s only April, Jyn!”

“Oh, you’ve a cheek!  Mind now, or I’ll bottle every strawberry I grow this year to pay you back.  Not a single fresh berry shall you get, or I’m a Tartar!”  She’s grinning as she threatens.  He smiles, saying

“Aww, honey…”

“I’ll do it, I will!”

“But mama,” pipes Galen from behind him “They’re no good if you don’t have them fresh…”

“Ah, but with so many plants now, sweetheart, and all those runners I transplanted last year – why, we might have too much fruit to eat by June.  I might have no choice but to bottle it.”

Bodhi pouts jokingly at the thought, guessing that above him on the wagon Galen will be doing the same.  Her eyes dart between the two of them and she laughs and relents, and kisses him.  “Take me shopping, then; and you can buy me a new hair-ribbon, since you want to, you frivolous man!”

“Well, it is almost our anniversary, you know.”  He kisses her back.

“So it is.  And that means it’s almost May, too; I need to buy dried fruit for a cake to take to Hiram and Profondita’s party.”

“We’ll buy as many raisins and dates and almonds as you could possibly want, I promise you.”

“Thank you.”

They’re standing by the front wheel of the wagon, with Galen laughing from above and saying “I want some raisins too!”  There are little birds singing in the meadow and a gentle breeze lifts Jyn’s thick brown hair and blows strands across her face.  He strokes them back for her, smiling at the warmth in her eyes.  Yes, not a bad marriage, all things considered.  He’s grateful every day that Cassian’s errors brought him the best helpmeet a man could ever have, the brightest and the bravest.

“It’s been a good seven years, hasn’t it?” he asks.

Jyn takes his free hand in hers and squeezes it; she nods, silent, smiling.

When he looks round, Cassian is coming out of the barn.

He’s wearing the brown work shirt he bought yesterday, and the denim pants.  The silver-buckled gun-belt is notable by its absence and Galen calls out at once “Aww, you’re not wearing your six-shooter, Cassian!”  His face is drooping with disappointment and Cassian gives an awkward laugh, and says nothing.

Bodhi hands Jyn up into the wagon and she hushes their son affectionately.  “Cassian isn’t coming out to shoot anything, dear.”

“But what if we see a buck?  He might want to hunt it!”

“You don’t shoot deer with a revolver, Galen.  That’s what hunting rifles are for,” Cassian says.  “And I’m sure your papa has one of those.  That’s the kind of gun a man needs who has a farm and a family to shoot for.  Are we ready to go?”  He leaps up beside Bodhi; looks around at Jyn and Galen on the rear bench.  “Your hair looks beautiful, Jyn.”

She looks away after a second. “Thank you.”

Bodhi flicks the reins.  “Let’s go!” 


	9. Chapter 9

The Raddus farm is a fine place, a good spread of land and a fine two-storey house.  They’ve been here probably the longest of the settlers now that old man Knight is dead and gone.  Hiram and Profondita have planted blue Indian corn and raised Swedish saddleback hogs and their three boys peacefully for near on sixteen years by their own account.  Only Henrik, the eldest of their sons, was born when they arrived; Erik and Maximilian have never known any other home.  Four of the family are ready, sitting in their big wagon, when Bodhi drives up the track to their gate.  Henrik is staying behind to guard the house.  He waves them off, his father’s Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder.

Their next pick-up is at Alder Farm, the Antilles place; a large wooden cabin and a string of lean-to outhouses, all colourfully-painted and surrounded by flowers.  It’s cheerfully untidy, a contrast to the Swedes’ neatly plank-boarded property.  Wedge and his younger brother are waiting on horseback beside their parents and sisters in another wagon.  Again, all but one of the family are coming into town; old Gerrit, papa Raymus’ father, shouts something cheerful in his breathy Dutch  from the stoop as the little caravan draws away. 

They trundle on, going down the slope and along the creek bank as far as the sandbar where the water runs shallow enough for crossing, and through a belt of trees, towards the red cedar shingles of the Jebels’ roof, and the sparkling stream that runs past their home.

There’s a wagon waiting there, too, but no happy group smiling and anticipating a trip to the store.  The wagon has its canvas cover up, and the whole family are working to load it, Noah and the three elder children ferrying furniture and sacks of stores while his wife Mary rounds up chickens amid the remains of a broken pen.  Her face is tear-streaked and pale.  As she catches each of the frantic hens she passes them to her youngest daughter, and little Alice pushes them into a wicker cage.  She’s crying too.

Bodhi reins his team in. “Noah!  Mary!  What’s happening?”

Mary Jebel stumbles, chasing the rooster, and falls to her knees in the mud with a sob.  Alice and one of the boys run to her.  Noah shoves a crate onto the wagon bed and turns to look across the stream with a bitter face. 

“Krennic’s lot raided us last night, while I was up at your place listening to a load of chatter ‘bout freedom and justice and the Lord knows what else besides.  They killed my sow and all three of the shoats, drove off half my chickens and trampled our spring corn into the ground.  Mary and the children were hiding under their beds in fear of their lives.  I’ve had enough.  No, don’t start! - we’re quitting, don’t try to talk me round again.”

“Noah, please, you don’t have to c-cut and run like this…” It’s hard to keep the shaking from his voice.  This is a disaster.  No sooner have they all come to an agreement and set themselves as an alliance than it’s all broken again, just like that?

Behind him in the next wagon, Hiram Raddus picks up the thread of his argument.  “Noah, Mary, we can stick together, if we all help each other we can make it through.”

“No, no more.  Don’t you dare tell me what I have to do.  You men have got wives and kids too, why don’t you think of them, ‘stead of your own damned pride for once?”

“He does think of us,” Jyn says angrily.  “That’s why we’re standing our ground, that’s why we’re staying and building a life here.”

“Well, you stay if you want, Jyn, you want to be a firebrand, you go right ahead and risk everything you’ve built.  We’re leaving.  Andrew, Susie, Grace, come on.  Don’t dawdle.  We don’t have time to waste gossiping.”

“Noah, please think again,” Bodhi says helplessly.  How can he bear it, that their little united front has gone already?  Are they really so weak of purpose that they can be snapped by just one push? 

“I want to see my children grow up,” comes the angry, unhappy reply.  “Not lay them in the earth in this damned valley!  No parcel of soil is worth risking your life over.”  Noah Jebel chivvies his kids before him, back towards the house and the row of trunks and baskets by the door, waiting to be packed for travelling.  He stops, shoulders heaving, as the kids get to work again; when at length he turns slowly, Bodhi sees there are tear tracks on his face.  Jebel draws in a deep breath and says “Listen, Rook, I don’t begrudge you, you think you know best, and that’s fine, you’re an educated man, I ain’t any such thing.  I’m skeered is the darned truth, skeered and scuppered.  I lost my nerve for this kind of fight a long time ago.  Don’t try to make me stay.”

“If you give in to them –“ Jyn begins. 

Jebel interrupts her.  “No _if_ about it!  We have no choice but give in.  They’ve won.  Cain’t you get it through your heads?  There ain’t a federal marshal within a hundred miles of here.  Empire is always going to be stronger than us, Krennic is always going to have the men and the firepower to do what he wants, and in the end that’s all there is to it.”

Bodhi tries to think of something more to say, but the despair on the man’s face silences him.  He knew that Jebel was the weakest link, and now that link has broken.  How long before another family gives up and gives in? 

They have to salvage what they can from the day.  He says quietly “God go with you, Noah.  Mary, kids.  May your journey go safely.”

There’s another wagon approaching from the south; he squints into the sun and makes out the Pamlo sisters, and Saw riding with them.  Wedge rides on a little way ahead, to warn them about the Jebels’ decision.  As they drive up Bodhi can hear the old soldier, grumbling about injustice and cowardice and the Rights of Man, and Colonel Shaw and Sergeant Harvey, and brave men that laid down their lives at his side in years past.  He’s settling-to for a good rant, by the sounds of it, harping on this and a string of other familiar stories of his.  Saw will never take things quietly; best for everyone’s sake if they move on quickly, before there are any more hard words uttered than have been said already. 

Bodhi flicks the reins and urges the team on. 

Cassian, beside him, is silent, and so is Jyn on the back seat.  When he looks round, he sees she is watching Galen.  Her son has twisted round on the bench seat to look back for as long as possible, waving goodbye to the Jebels with a fierce little frown on his face. 

Behind them, just one of the children, fair-haired little Alice, waves back, standing alone in the muddy wreckage of the hen coop.  Her parents and siblings work on, clearing the rest of their lives, clearing and retreating from the field, with all hope lost.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The farmers' trip to Merrick's General Stores and Emporium starts well, but things turn nasty pretty quick.

Cassian tries to sit relaxed as they approach the settlement.  It isn’t easy.  He glances up and down the row of buildings and disciplines his hands not to fidget, his fingers not to seek the Colt, that is not hanging at his hip.  His mind not to remind him in sweating fear that once again he’s come unarmed into the enemy’s territory.

Bodhi pulls up alongside the store.  One by one behind him the other drivers rein in their teams and halt their wagons, until there is a whole line of them waiting, and passengers piling out on every side.  Eager voices scatter in the brisk spring air.

 Jyn scrambles down using the spokes of the back wheel like a ladder.  Little Galen clambers after her, chattering with excitement. 

Cassian is still surveying the street.

Half a dozen men are lounging outside the store and the adjacent saloon, and occupying the bench outside the barbers.  He recognises the sour-eyed man Kallus and the two older fellows who’d ridden with him.  The others are strangers.  They’re all armed; revolvers at their hips, rifles propped behind them or slung across their spread knees.  Cold eyes scan the farmers’ families, as if counting heads and tallying them.

From the boardwalk by the wagons, as many eyes look back, growing bright with tension as they realise the ill-will that watches them.  The initial happy chatter begins to fade, and though the children still bucket about oblivious, on holiday for a few hours, their mothers and fathers collect themselves and begin to file into the store.

Cassian climbs down from the Rooks’ wagon, keeping his eye on the watchers. 

A voice with a strong Georgia accent calls out mockingly “Why looky here, sodbusters’ve brought their women and children to protect them!”

“Don’t fergit the cripple!” another voice adds, to gleeful laughter.

At the back of the group of farmers, Saw thumps his crutch on the wooden sidewalk and says loudly “Getting so’s you can’t breathe round here without smelling goddamn southern rebs…”

Cassian positions himself on Jyn’s flank in the little press heading in to the door.  She is bristling yet as he looks down at her she relaxes, as though something in his presence is calming.  She leans in towards him, saying in a low voice “Don’t worry, Cassian, I can control myself these days.”

There’s still a fire in her eyes but it is more rueful than blazing.  He manages to give her a taut smile.

He’d like to kiss her hand, but he can’t.  He moves back to allow old Saw to follow her inside.  Steps into the store last of the small party.

It’s crowded inside, men and women clustering at the different counters and shelves of stock.  Soft voices murmur, discussing everything from whetstones to crockery.   The indifferent cool daylight falls on the bustle of people and the goods on display, dull cloth and gleaming glass, sacks of grain bulging or hanging soft and half-empty, bright paper labels on the stacks of canned goods and bottles of liquor and medicines.  At the far end of the store in a staircase to the upper storey, and here on the ground floor there’s a set of swinging half-doors to the left, leading through into the saloon bar.

Several people, Jyn among them, have gathered around the big seed merchants’ catalogues, and storekeeper Merrick bustles over to them with a smile and an order book. 

The Pamlo sisters have found a tiny display of hats and are trying them all on one by one.  Taris finds one that fits her neatly, a boyish boater with a wide straw brim; as he watches, she sets it back on the crown of her head so that the brim frames her face and her smartly braided hair.  Her sister coos with delight and holds up a coloured ribbon to the crown. 

Wedge Antilles and Erik Raddus watch them and smile bashfully.  The rest of the men seem more interested in another catalogue, a collection of new-fangled farm gear like seed drills and mowing machines; all bar Saw, who stumps over to a seat and settles with a grunt of discomfort, stretching his crippled leg out awkwardly.

Profondita Raddus and Silvia Antilles are exclaiming over dress fabrics, with several of the children at their feet shrieking with delight at a pair of calico kittens that roll and play tag on the floor.

It all seems calm, and harmless, and happy. 

“Please, Mr Merrick,” Galen pipes up, tugging the storeman’s sleeve.  “I brought the bottle back, sir.”

Merrick looks down and smiles through his blond moustache.  “Just pop it through to Mrs M at the bar, then, and I’ll get you your deposit.  Is it to be the usual? - which flavour would you like?  Or is it to be a penny, this time?”

Little Galen shakes his head solemnly.  “I’d like the candy stick.  May I have peppermint, please?” 

Cassian suddenly remembers having an appalling sweet tooth at that age.  How unreal it seems, that picture of the past.  His own life, once upon a time.  A world where his biggest challenges were to finish his homework and earn a penny to buy candy; where if he had two pennies it meant enough candy for both him and his friends.  Not that Jyn ever ate much of it, though she would devour anything salt...

When he glances through the swinging half doors into the saloon, he sees four of the idling men are now inside, including Kallus.  Seated with them is a pale-faced fellow in a long white duster coat, a man whose smile barely reaches his thin lips.  As Galen makes to climb up the high wooden steps to go through, the men catch one another’s eyes.  The man in white nods imperceptibly to Kallus. 

All kinds of wrong and ill-will lurk under that tiny twitch of a stranger’s head and Cassian moves on instinct.  Springing up the two steps and catching the little boy around the waist he swings him up as if in play and deposits him back down onto the shop floor.  “I can take the bottle back for you, don’t you worry.  You go get your peppermint cane – look, Mr Merrick’s got one out of the jar for you already!”  

“Okay,” says Galen happily, and trots away for his payment in sugar, leaving Cassian in the open half-door, with the empty bottle in his hand and every eye in the saloon on him.

The grey-eyed woman at the counter at least is not hostile.  He greets her measured smile courteously.  “Good morning, Mrs Merrick.  Just returning your soda bottle.  Galen’s already collecting his deposit.”

She nods and holds out a hand without comment; but from the far side of the room a voice snipes “Enjoy your soft drink, sodbuster?”

There’s a ripple of laughter as Cassian turns.

Kallus and two of the younger men are moving up as if to flank him.  So it’s to be more of the same trouble as last time he was here, then. 

“I warned you, Mexican, if you came back I’d have your hide.  Guess you just liked the idea of getting beat some more, huh?”

“I don’t recall that I was exactly _beat_ ,” Cassian reminds him.

His split lip and the other bruises are still tender,  but the return blows he landed have left Kallus with a blacked eye and a succession of purple welts from temple to jawline.

“Why, you dirty lying son of a –“

If he can make the man lose his temper as quickly again, this will be over the sooner.  Cassian leans back against the bar, making sure he can see everyone in the room.  Glances round the whole group, getting their measure.  Most of the party from outside have come in now.  There are the two older men he met before, then Kallus and his two younger assistants, and a lad of fourteen or fifteen with the merest smudge of facial hair; and the man in white.  All bar the latter are on their feet now.

He braces himself; if they all rush at once he’s likely to take a good few hits.  Kallus is clearly spoiling for a rematch but the crucial factor is whether his mates will stand back and let him do his own fighting, or wade in and help.

The man in white is smiling as he watches his bully-boys line up.

Behind Cassian, Monique Merrick says coldly “Now see here, you keep your boys in order, Orson Krennic.  I won’t have fighting in this house.”

“Mrs Merrick!  But of course…” A voice like a mockery of molasses.  “There’s not a man among us but is here for a peaceful drink, and nothing more.  At least, none of _my_ men has any intention of causing trouble.  But I guess I can’t speak for you, though, can I? – Mister? –“

Orson Krennic.  So this is the man whose next action every farmer in the valley fears and awaits; he rises, smiling, affably and earnestly false, holding out a hand as if in regular greeting.  He’s older than the others, perhaps in his late forties, and he has the stance of a man who relies on a hard mind and neglects a soft body.  The outstretched hand is smooth and white and clean, and his smile is smooth too.  When Cassian does not move forward to receive the handshake he takes a single step, still offering it, and repeats “Mister? –“ in the same voice.  As if the actor in front of him has missed his cue, and he’s generous enough to cover for it.

“My name is Andor,” Cassian says after a moment.  “I work for Mr and Mrs Rook.”  He does not shake hands.

“Orson Krennic –“ and again there’s the proffered hand and that awkward, signalling pause; then Krennic raises his eyebrows and finally gives up the charade.  His smile is suddenly gelid. “Ah, the Rooks, yes.  Delightful people.  Such a lovely little boy.  I’m sure for someone like yourself it must feel good to have a place there.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” 

“Oh, I think I do.  Mexican, recent immigrant, looking for work, handy with your fists and quick to use them.  Yes, I know your type, you see.”

“Well, you’re right that I’m Mexican.”

Krennic waits for him to go on, slowly simpering into another sticky smile as Cassian says nothing more.  “I _see_.  And laconic with it.  How impressive.  Well, Mr And-Or –“ he divides the syllables as if amused by them both – “I can use a man like you.”  His voice changes, is suddenly icily practical.  “We have plenty of work at Star Ranch and not enough hands.  What do you say to that?”

“I say that explains why your men spend so much time sitting around here in town and drinking.  If you’re so short of hands.”

“Ah, well –“ Krennic waves his own lily-white hand airily – “Different hands for different tasks, you know?  I’m serious, boy.  This is the best offer you’ll get.  You’d have a roof over your head and a regular wage.  Empire Holdings are a good employer, everyone says so.”

“I work for Bodhi Rook.”

“Whatever Rook’s giving you, I’ll add on half as much again.  What do you say?”

“I’ve no wish to change my situation.”

“Really?  You surprise me.  Farming?  I fail to see the attraction for a man like yourself.”

“The Rooks are my friends.”

“Ah! – the power of friendship.  How _touching_.  So, you’re not interested, then?”

Cassian shakes his head.  “Not remotely.”

Krennic starts to turn away, then looks back to add in an offhand voice “Of course, the wife is a pretty little thing if you like them vicious.  I’m sure she’s got energy enough for the two of you…”

“Why, you –“

He had known as soon as he turned down the desultory offer of work that the next thing would be a fight; but not that Jyn’s good name would be spat upon like that.  He gets one decent swing in before the thugs rush him, so at least he has the momentary satisfaction of seeing Krennic stagger and reel back from his punch, and drops of blood spattering on the front of the long white coat.  But then he’s caught between a half dozen sets of fists and everything’s chaos.  Mrs Merrick is shouting, everyone is shouting.  He hears his own voice shout, too, angry words of abuse at the slur Krennic was implying, then a yell of pain as one of the lashing fists connects with his shoulder. 

It’s almost like a dance, but one in which no-one will consider using the proper steps or keeping time, so long as they can grapple a close touch with their partner. 

Cassian slams fists and boots and knees into any exposed flesh, grabbing up a chair to beat one man down, ducking under a wild swiping attack from the youngster; dodging one blow, moving sideways to get a table between himself and Krennic, sparing a glance behind to check no-one else has outflanked him.  They won’t fight fair – five onto one – so nor will he.  If he gets the chance he’ll bite and gouge.  His hands hurt already, bloodied with punching; and something more steely than knuckles connects with his cheekbone, so that his head rings like a stone bell and his eyes are jolted in their sockets.  He can taste blood inside his mouth, feel it trickling down his face. 

There’s a commotion of voices down in the store; a horrified feminine scream, a shout of “Well stop them this instant!” and another voice saying “Stay out of this, Rook!”

Someone swipes Cassian’s feet from under him in this distraction and they pile in on him as he falls.  At the swinging half-doors to the store he sees Galen’s astonished face peeping for a moment.

A boot smacks into his skull.  The shouting close by and further off, the anger and fear and the stamping of feet, all blurs together into a cloudy bubble of sound.  Someone stomps his right hand.  It feels like it’s burning.

When they haul him upright he has another brief moment of satisfaction; they may have him pinned now, but not a man among them has escaped unmarked.  Then Kallus takes up a stance in front of him and as he struggles to brace himself against the rough hands holding him the man swings back and strikes him in the gut, and he’s left bent double, retching and choking for breath.  There’s another scream somewhere nearby, and a sound of booted feet running.  The swing doors creak.   

Cassian spits blood, shaking his dizzy head.

He sees Bodhi in the doorway, staring, dark eyes snapping with fury.  Sees Jyn at his elbow wielding a broomstick like a giant policeman’s truncheon.

Sees Galen behind them, spying again, candy stick in hand and an expression like that of a sportsman enjoying the moment before his team turn the tables in a fine, well-played game of football.

Bodhi barrels forward, head down and fists up; hurls himself onto Kallus.  They crash to the floor, grappling and struggling and roaring.  Jyn has moved in behind him, to lunge at the men dragging Cassian back.  They gape at her; and the broom handle smacks into their bodies, stabbing like a fencer’s blade; striking up under one man’s ribs, then smashing down on the other’s shoulder.  They both let go, yelling.  Cassian lurches, swings clumsily to pummel a fist into one man’s face while Jyn recovers her guard and immediately lunges again, to strike the second man in the groin.  He crumples with a squeal. 

Bodhi gets a grip on his opponent’s brilliantined hair; he pounds his head against the floor hard, twice, three times, before being thrown off.  Both of them scramble to their feet and they circle for a moment, glaring and swinging at one another.

Cassian drives an elbow into his opponent’s Adam’s apple.  Something gives, though it’s hard to tell how much of it is his hand crunching and how much is the other’s flesh crushed under his blow.  His head hurts now each time he moves and with each punch he lands it feels as though his fist has been broken and dipped in fire.  He’s staggering slightly, trying to hold his balance, but he lashes out steadily, left and right.

The bullies’ boss has been hanging back, snarling encouragement and nursing a purpling cheek.  But as Cassian hurls the man he throat-punched to the floor, he sees Jyn pivoting to flank his open side, and she smacks a crashing blow to the side of Krennic’s skull.  The man goes down like a dropped sack this time.

And then the three of them meet in the middle of the room, himself and Bodhi and Jyn, back to back like a trained unit locking shoulders to face down a charge. 

Just in time.  The outer doors crash open to admit another three of Krennic’s men.

Galen is still watching, he notices; watching and beaming, a happy aficionado of the sport.  One of the Raddus children is staring over his shoulder; he says something to her with a beam and crunches a big bite off the end of his candy-stick.

The newcomers square up, and the bloodied and furious remnants haul themselves up too, ready to head back into the fight.  The man Cassian punched in the voice-box is clinging to a chair, gasping and mewling like a sick cat.  Krennic is on his feet again, his urbane face contorted, blood dripping from his cheekbone.

“Do it!” he snaps as his men hover; and they move in.

Six onto three.  _We could have worse odds._  

Jyn hefts the broom handle, settling into a perfect _en garde_ , body turned sideways to the threat and weapon balanced ready.  Bodhi is bracing himself for a rush.  Cassian shakes his aching head once more, breathing hard and lifting his bloodied fists.  But just as the men advance there’s a shout and storekeeper Merrick strides in.  He has a shotgun, and a face of righteous thunder.  His wife stands at his shoulder glaring at the damage to her tables and chairs.

“Call off your dogs, Krennic!”

“My men were not the ones who started this, I’ll have you know!  That man – the Mexican – he assaulted me!”

“Is this true?  Rook, is this true – did your man start it?  I’ll not tolerate brawling in my place, do you hear?”

“I didn’t see how it started,” Bodhi says, out of breath but level-voiced.  “My little boy came running and told me they were attacking Cassian here, and when my wife and I looked through that’s what we saw, the whole mob of them against one man.”

“They were only defending me.”  Krennic’s tone is wounded.  “I made a simple joke and the Mexican went for me.  Hot-headed, like all his kind!”

“I know your _simple jokes_ ,” Monique Merrick puts in coldly.  “Ten to one it was an insult in a new wrapper.”

Her husband chews on his moustache; fixes Cassian with a stern look.  “That’s as may be.  This is the second time you’ve been accused of fighting here, young man.  What happened this time?”

“That man - he –“ Cassian nods Krennic’s way – “I wouldn’t call it a joke.  He was saying vile things about Mrs Rook here and I – forgot myself.  It won’t happen again.”

He’s pretty sure of that; he’s marked every one of them, even if they did overpower him for a time.  Until his friends joined in.

Jyn is looking up at him with a rueful smile.  She’s still holding the broom handle like a weapon.

It ought not to give him so much delight, seeing her wade into a scrap like the fighter she always was.  She’s told him repeatedly that she wants to keep the peace; she and Bodhi both.  And here they are backing him up in a fist-fight without a word.

Merrick lowers his gun, to a disgusted blustering splutter from Krennic.

“Very well, I’ll take your word for it that there was fair provocation.  But no more of this.  Is that understood?”

“We will send for the Marshall from Coreville if we have to,” Mrs Merrick adds. “He might not be nearby, but if he has to come, you may be sure he’ll see justice done.  So keep your fighting out of our place of business, all of you, if you don’t want to be taken off to jail.”

There’s not a trace of apology in Bodhi’s voice as he says “I’ll pay for the damage here.”  He sounds almost proud of the mess they’ve made.  “Come on, Jyn.  Cassian, let’s go.”

Jyn puts up her weapon; she turns it about in her hands as if checking it for quality and then passes it to Mrs Merrick.  “Good stick you’ve got there.  Unmarked.”

There’s a faint twitch of amusement in the other woman’s expression as their eyes meet.  Then Jyn slips past her, bending down and holding her arms out.  “Galen?  Sweetheart, are you alright?”

“Mama, you were amazing!”  The little voice thrills with pride.

“Yes, dear.  Now, pick up mama’s parcel of shopping for her, will you?  Don’t want to forget all the things we came here to buy, in all this hullaballoo, now do we?”

He runs to help with her purchases, still crowing at their victory. “You and papa and Cassian were just _punching_ them out!  I bet you three could lick _anyone_!  You were so brave - you’re as brave as the knights of the Round Table!”

All the way home, he goes on celebrating; and he’s still running on two hours later, as they sit at the dining table back at the farm.  Jyn hasn’t put her shopping away yet; as soon as they got back she put water to heat, to clean their injuries, and now she’s busying herself with the bottles of a small home medicine case. 

Cassian is distressed to see she has a large bruise on her cheek, though it seems to be the only blow she took.  But she’s mourning far more over the ripped shoulder seams of her blouse.  “I don’t make my clothes to fight in,” she laments fretfully.

“You could’ve whipped them all if Mr Merrick didn’t’ve stopped you, mama!  Cassian, you were amazing!”

Cassian doesn’t feel amazing.  His belly is bruised purple and his left eye is blacked; the old cut on his face has opened up to keep the new ones company.  “Is there any chance that they’ll back down now?” he asks.

“I’d like to hope so.”  Bodhi is bathing his right hand; the knuckles are torn and bleeding, and swollen with bruises.  “I think they might see that this time we’ve drawn a line.  We’ve said _Thus far but no further!_ to them.  Yeah, I hope so.”

For all his talk of preserving the peace at all costs, he looks quite cheerful about things having come to a fight.  But Cassian can’t feel hopeful, much though he would like to.

“You were awesome, papa, and mama was so amazing!  And Cassian, you got them all!  You’re a _hero_!”

He remembers the rage on Krennic’s face.  There was no sign of acceptance or regrouping there, or anything but cold, bilked fury.

Jyn sits down between them, holding a bottle labelled Witch-hazel and a roll of bandages.  She looks near to tears as she uncorks the stopper.

Cassian submits to the sting of the tincture, and the shame of knowing he brought them into this.


	11. Chapter 11

A week has gone by since the brawl at Merrick’s General Stores and Emporium.  The morning of May the first dawns bright and sweet.  Jyn is up early as always, making up the fire, setting oatmeal to cook and coffee to brew, heading out to the byre to milk the cow and the nanny goats. 

She glances into the barn as she comes back with her pail of milk.  The hayloft is still semi-shadowed.  A few long rays of morning light pick out Cassian’s form; he’s lying on his side in the straw, shirtless, the blanket rucked around his waist.  One hand is curled in front of his face, thin and brown as a branch of coral, and his hair falls over his sleeping eyes.

She swallows and looks away.  _Let him sleep, he’s worked himself like a slave since the fight last week.  Surely I can let him rest now.._. 

Yesterday he and Bodhi were up till past midnight, cutting and clearing a huge stump in the paddock beside the house.  It’s been plaguing Bodhi since they first arrived here, that stump, and he had cheered and then danced over its final ruin by lamplight last night, had swung his hips and snapped his fingers as if his ancestors danced in him.  Cassian joined in for a moment, clapping his hands above his head, stamping his booted feet.  They’d both laughed at her face when she appeared at the door; laughed and danced more, singing and whistling. 

She’d wanted to leap off the stoop and dance with them, let them swing her about, kick up her petticoats and stomp in the dirt too.  Had had to hush them instead, before they woke Galen. 

Bodhi is up already, of course; probably feeding the rabbits by now, or checking the hen-house for any eggs laid in the night.  Let Cassian sleep.  Today is the Raddus’ May Day party; there’s work enough that can wait a single day.  Perhaps there will be dancing today, to make up for the dance she had to forego. 

And it’s her wedding anniversary.  The thought is almost droll, now the day has come.  She glances at the utilitarian pants and apron she’s pulled on and determines to change into something pretty when she’s finished her chores.

Put the milk into the dairy-house for the cream to rise for churning.  Bring through butter and cheese and a flitch of bacon, stir the oatmeal, set the table, stir the oatmeal again, put a skillet to heat beside it.  Check on the vegetable patch, straighten the scarecrow, water the seed beds.

By the time she’s slicing bacon and slipping the rashers into the skillet, there’s a happy fluting outside; Galen and his little pipe, welcoming the day.  Jyn looks out of the door and calls “Sweetheart, come in a moment and mind the breakfast, please?  Mama just wants to go upstairs quickly.”

He trots in, sniffing at the air delightedly.  “Bacon, mmm!”

“Yes, dear.”  She hands him a flat wooden spoon.  “Can you turn the rashers for me if they catch?  Thank you…  You’re looking smart today, dear.  Is that your new shirt?”

“Is it alright for me to wear it today?  Gallia Antilles likes the colour blue.”

“Does she, dear?  Well, it looks lovely on you.”  Gallia is the youngest Antilles, a rosy-cheeked child with chestnut hair and a happy nature.  It’s good that losing the Jebel girls won’t mean Galen growing up without female friends.  “Thank you for helping me, you’re a good boy.  Careful with the hot fat!  And don’t let your papa sneak himself any bits if he comes in for breakfast.”

She leaves him prodding at the meat as it sizzles, and goes up the ladder to the roof-space and her mother’s old trunk.  What to change into for a special day like this?  Not just Sunday best but something she doesn’t usually wear.  There’s that shirt-waist with the piping down the sleeves, maybe that with her striped skirt would look nice…

There’s a sweet smell when she hoists back the lid of the big chest.  Cedar wood and lavender, evocative of far-off forests and summer days in childhood, of the mounds of silver-blue flowers either side of the door in Jedhaville.  Lyra Erso’s beloved lavender bushes, grow from cuttings all the way from her native Piedmont. 

How far away her old home seems, and how long ago…

Jyn lifts out the big winter quilt from the top, and the scarlet table runner with the Christmas stars that she embroidered so carefully the year before her father died; and the winter sheets of heavy cotton flannel.  There’s a little box underneath, wrapped in a handkerchief, and although she knows perfectly well what’s inside she opens it for a quick, happy glance at the memento.  Knitted baby boots, soft blue wool - what tiny, tiny feet he had, tiny feet and tiny toes, her precious, precious baby boy! 

Her nursing shawl comes next, and Galen’s christening robe.  She remembers his stubby little legs kicking, swathed in broderie anglaise, and the way he’d waved his little fists and laughed, trying to play-fight the preacher splashing his face.  _God blessed me with a happy baby; please let me always keep him safe and happy._

And there’s the striped skirt she was looking for, peeking out from beneath something swathed in old sheeting.

A something which rustles and feels oddly heavy when she lifts it out.  Jyn knows what it is, and she hesitates for a moment at the onrush of memories, bitter and sweet and confused, so much less certain than those the baby clothes had evoked. 

She lays the bundle down on the timbered floor and unwraps it.

Pale blue silk shantung, a texture like butterfly wings and the tender weight of a lover’s touch; the bodice boned and trimmed with sea-green ribbons, and the skirts full, flounced out over taffeta petticoats.  Her wedding dress.

The first few years, she had worn it from time to time; for high days and holidays, as her mother had always done.  Easter and Christmas, her birthday and her father’s, the celebrations at the end of the war.  All the random days when to be pretty is part of a woman’s duty.  But since arriving in the valley she hasn’t put it on once.  No call for prettiness out here.

It’s a beautiful dress, and it will make Bodhi happy to see it again.  It will be good to pretend for one day that she’s a lady who can be pretty anytime she chooses.  Isn’t that why she was searching up here in the first place?  Something nice to wear, to celebrate in.

She lifts all the other things back into their places gently and shuts them away, back into the cedar chest, the strewn dried lavender, and the past.

When she goes back into the kitchen, climbing down the ladder carefully in her long full skirts, she finds the pans have been taken off the heat.  The bacon is cooling, the oatmeal on the way to having a skin over it.  Jyn stares in frank astonishment.  It’s not like Galen to be disobedient and she panics at the sudden thought of what might have drawn, or taken, him away.  But there’s no sign of trouble; neither the meat nor the porridge has burned and the table is undisturbed.  She glances into the box room, but he’s not there.  Throwing down her old pants and shirt she gathers her skirts again and goes out onto the stoop, readying herself to call anxiously.

There’s a meadow bird singing on the roof and she can hear Bodhi whistling somewhere nearby.  That’s reassuring; he would have come at once at the first sign of an intruder.  And further off, behind the house, the sound of Galen’s little pipe echoes both his papa’s tune and the birdsong. 

Faintly with it comes the sound of Cassian’s voice. 

Well, it was naughty of him to leave the job she’d given him, but he’s safe; he hasn’t gone far and he’s with Cassian, who she would trust with all of their lives.  Perhaps today is to be a day for indulgence all round. 

Jyn makes her way down the steps and past the vegetable beds, taking the path that leads to open ground, behind the house and the barn and byre.

The tuneless fluting has stopped, and now she can hear their voices.  Galen sounds excited and admiring; she can’t make out his words at first but his delight is clear.  For a moment she wonders if Cassian has been making another flute.  But then she hears him.

“Guns are as good or as bad as the people that hold them, Galen.  A gun like mine, if a bad man uses it – that’s a dangerous thing to be near.”

“But you’re not a bad man,” insists Galen happily.  “I _know_ you’re not.”

Cassian sounds so weary it makes her heart catch. “Thank you; but there are plenty of folks who’d call me bad.”

“Well, they’re just plain _wrong_.”  Her son is so forthright when he’s certain of something. 

_Just like his father._

_Oh, my traitorous heart…_

“I bet you ain’t _never_ fired at anyone unless they deserved it.  And I bet you shot ‘em _clean_.  I bet you!”

Cassian gives a faint laugh.  “Are you trying to set me to gambling, Galen Rook?  I’m not a gambler by nature, I’m afraid.”

Jyn has been treading as softly as she can, to hear their words.  She reaches the back corner of the barn and steps round it cautiously, blue silk gathered in front of her, white underskirt showing bright at her ankles, rustling taffeta and starched net.

Galen is sitting astride the fence, his legs swinging, and Cassian beside him stands in his old brown pants and buckskin jacket, holding his Colt for the boy to see.

_Oh, my dear, please, don’t.  Please don’t teach my boy the lure of guns…_

“I bet you can hit that thistle over there,” Galen says excitedly.

“It’s not a laughing matter.”  That weary note again.  No, surely he won’t teach the love of guns; he sounds as though the weight of it is killing him.  But her son says “Aww, please!” and with a smile and a shake of his head Cassian casts his eyes down at the six-shooter. 

He looks for a moment utterly broken.  To Jyn’s relief, he holsters the gun.  For a moment she feels safe again, and certain.

Until suddenly he draws and fires.  All six chambers emptied in an instant.  His movements quick and exact as a snake’s.  His eyes cold and black and calculating.

A hundred yards away across the scrub, the tufty heads on a thistle are clipped off one by one, thrown into the air and bursting apart.  Puffs of down drift away as the fragments scatter in the breeze.

“ _Wow_!”  Galen sits up straight.  “Aww, wow, that’s amazing!  You’re the fastest _ever_!”

“I’m pretty fast.  There are men faster.  And speed isn’t everything.  In fact without accuracy it’s worth nothing.”

She can’t bear it.  That quick draw, that vicious drilling shooting, the distant harmless weed shredded apart and felled.  He’s a gunslinger.  God only knows what he’s done, to become a man like this, in the long years since they parted.  But this is something beyond toleration and she raises her voice in a bitter cry “Cassian!  What are you doing?”

They both whip round.  The same lightning reflexes in father and son.

O _h my Lord, please, don’t let me think of them that way, they are not, in all ways that matter they are **not**_... 

Galen pouts, reluctantly guilty; Cassian’s face is hunted.  Jyn hurries forward.  “Please, stop this.  I don’t want guns to be a part of my boy’s life.”

“Mama, don’t be cross, he was only –“

“Hush, dear.  Cassian, I mean it.”

“Jyn, a gun is only a tool.”

“That’s what every man says, right before he uses it to kill.  It’s only a tool, only bad in the hands of a bad man doing bad deeds.  But you none of you think yourselves bad, do you?  No matter what you do, you all think you’re the one in the right and it’s the other fellow who deserves to die!”

His face has shut, like a slammed door; she can’t even see the pain inside.  Knows it’s there nonetheless.  Cassian was gentle, once, a kindly and idealistic boy who looked up to her father, eager and innocent as little Galen is today.

_I must not think of him as Galen’s –_

She is facing off against him like an enemy, her son silenced momentarily, looking on with hurt eyes; and footsteps come running, urgent on the dry ground.  Bodhi appears round the side of the barn, wielding a hoe, his face a mask of anger, masking fear.  He stops dead.  “Oh thank God.  I heard shooting –“

“Cassian was showing off,” Jyn says curtly; and sees the minute flinch her words cut from him.  He was; and he knows it; and her own shame at hurting him with that knowledge cuts her too.  Knives in all her words, lately.

“It was my fault,” Galen pipes up.  “Please don’t be angry, mama.”

“Of course it’s not your fault, don’t be silly –“

“No, mama, it _is_.”

“Galen!  Don’t contradict your mother.”  Bodhi’s voice is gentle but the reprimand is unmistakable.

“But I asked him to show me his gun.  I asked him why he doesn’t wear it all the time.  I _asked_ him to.”

Her son.  Her precious son, braving her anger to own his own fault, for justice’ sake.

Cassian kneels down, looking into the anxious little face before him.  “Yes, it’s true that you asked, Galen.  But I should have said no, and I didn’t.  Your mother is right, I was showing off to you, and I’m sorry for that.”

It’s hard to say which of them looks the more crushed; and dear God, how it hurts, seeing those two downturned mouths side by side, and those unhappy eyes.  Both of them trying to do right, too late.

Bodhi sets the hoe against the nearest fence post.  He’s beginning to smile.  “Well, there’s no harm done in the end.  And now, will you take a look at this sight! –“ he’s turning to Jyn, holding out his arms; and the smile on his face is so unabashedly happy it’s heart-breaking.  “Look at this little woman in her wedding dress!  I tell you, Cassian, she hasn’t aged a day.”

He takes two strides and embraces her, and she hides her head on his shoulder to escape Cassian’s eyes for a moment.

“Aww, you look beautiful, mama. Doesn’t she?”

The reply is so quiet she could almost have missed it.  “Yes, Galen, your mama is beautiful.”

Bodhi plants an affectionate kiss on her forehead as she looks up.  “And we have a party to get to.”

It’s good to have something to distract her focus again.  “I need to wrap the fruit cake!  Bodhi, dear, your breakfast is almost ready – it would have been if a certain young man hadn’t gotten distracted!”

“Aww, mama!”

Jyn allows herself to be preoccupied, and to be bright and cheerful again.  She doesn’t look at Cassian as they go indoors.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bodhi looks back on the great sorrow of his life; and steadies himself to set such thoughts aside and enjoy a rare day off...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay in getting back to this.  
> Apologies also for hurting Bodhi.

A small part of Bodhi would like to shout it out loud.  _For God’s sake, Jyn, just tell the man and get it over with!_ Yes, the likelihood is that Cassian will leave once he knows the truth, and they’ll be the more vulnerable for it – but to keep up this lie will kill something in him.  He looks at Jyn like a dying man already.  A man staked in a desert, seeing the distant shimmer of water he can never reach; a man condemned to the noose and knowing his soul cannot be redeemed, even by God.

But it’s her choice, in the end, and her mind is made-up.  If Cassian doesn’t ask, they are not to tell.

He remembers lying beside her in their bed, hearing her furious unhappy whisper: _I have to protect Galen.  It would tear his life apart if he knew.  He has to be our only priority here._

 _He might be pleased,_ he’d murmured back.

_Bodhi, no!  Hush, don’t say that!_

_I don’t mean he doesn’t love me.  But – didn’t you ever wish you’d been adopted, when you were little? – wish you’d come from somewhere more interesting than just your parents and their ordinary world?  Cassian must seem a lot more exciting than me.  He might be thrilled to have him for a papa._

_Oh, my dear, no…  I know he likes Cassian – and I’m glad he does, I don’t think I could have borne it if Galen had been frightened of him or disliked him – but I am certain he’s never once wished you weren’t his father._

_Even though I am not._

_But you are.  In every way that matters, every way save the seed of one night, you **are**_.

He’s ashamed that he still needs to hear her say it; but his heart beats warmer for a moment, each time she does.  Until he remembers again the sister Galen never knew; and then it breaks again. 

They’d planned to name the baby Jasmine, after his mother, if it was a girl.  Even now more than five years later he still thinks of that little dead face, and Jyn’s weak hands clinging on as she cried.  What would his daughter have looked like now?  He imagines dark eyes, even larger than Galen’s, and a smile like the moon.  Waist-length black hair in pigtails.

But the doctor had been quite adamant.  If they risked another pregnancy, the odds were that it would end the same way, in a premature stillbirth; and it wouldn’t just leave Jyn haemorrhaging for two days this time, it would kill her.

There had been only one choice they could make, faced with that.  He’ll never see the child born, that would have been all his.

They’re driving towards the Raddus farm now, people already gathering ahead of them for the festivities.  Jyn sits beside him, radiant in her blue dress, and Galen is bouncing about like a puppy in the back.  Bodhi looks across at his old friend riding by the wagon, silent and withdrawn on his black horse, and sees his son’s profile.  Even the way Cassian’s hair springs back from his brow is the same. 

He does understand Jyn’s decision, understands and respects it; but still it seems cruel that Cassian has a child, and will never know it.

He doesn’t want to lose Galen; it’s agony even now to think of this secret truth, that his little boy isn’t really his.  But surely a man has a right to know he’s a father; and a child has a right to know who his father is, doesn’t he?

 _In every way that matters, **you** are_ …

He imagines Galen’s face, if he heard the words _I’m not your papa._ The world’s betrayal in those dark eyes; the thought is like a knife in his belly.

No, she’s made the right choice.  A mother knows the deep gut-truth of these things, she carried that boy in her viscera; she _knows_.  How can he contemplate hurting his son, for the sake of an abstract truth?  Galen _is_ his son, he couldn’t love him anymore if he’d been born of his own blood.  The child he held crying as a tiny frail infant is his child, and the light of his life.  He would do anything to protect him.  That’s a real truth, nothing abstract at all about it; a strong gritty fighting truth, with dirt under its nails. 

_Everything I do, I do to protect you…_

How strange, after all this time, to find himself echoing Jyn’s father, and understanding him at last.  He would lie for little Galen, he would cheat for him and he would fight for him; work himself into the ground for him.  Kill for him.  Die for him.

Galen is leaping up and down on the rear bench of the wagon, gabbling with excitement. _My precious, dearest lad, my darling boy, my son…_

“Careful there, son,” he says over one shoulder. “Mind you don’t fall off!”

“But papa, there are lanterns and flags and _I can see a string of firecrackers_ – **_papa!_** – there’s gonna be **_firecrackers_**!” 

“There are indeed, how exciting.”  Jyn reaches round to grab her rambunctious offspring and haul him wriggling against her side.  “I heard Mrs Merrick talking about the fireworks they’ve ordered and all the other good things.  There’s going to be firecrackers and roman candles and sparklers, and a bonfire, and lots and _lots_ of cake!”  She plants a kiss on his cheek, laughing.  “You’re going to have such a wonderful day, my darling!  And Gallia Antilles and all the others will admire your smart new shirt.”

“Aww, mama…”

 _So, Gallia, eh?_   A sweet child, with that competitive, determined spirit he remembers his own youngest siblings showing; so long ago, so far away.

It’s so important for Galen to have friends his own age, growing up with no brothers and sisters.  Perhaps in some ways it would be safer for them to leave here and make a new start somewhere Empire has never reached.  But this place, their farm, their home here; this is is more than just a land claim.  Rogue is so friendly, and so diverse, and it’s a place with a future, a real community.  They might never find that again, and if they were to move on, Galen would be hit hard.  He’s never had to take a deep breath, as his parents have done, and give up his world for the sake of an unclear future, and he’s too young yet to have to learn that skill.  Let his life be here, among good people that know him.  _Please, Lord, let it be so._

They turn into the top meadow behind the farmhouse, and he pulls on the reins and steadies the team to a stop, and puts his unhappy thoughts aside like the blighted seedlings they are.  Jumps down, to tie the horses up to the rail. “Here we are!”

The whole farmyard is decorated; Swedish and American flags, garlands of plaited prairie grass, daisies, ribbon bows; even the palings round the hog pen are strung with flowers.  A pair of big trestle tables stand under the family’s row of fruit trees, their pine boards all scrubbed and whitened.  The centrepiece is a fine ham, sugar-glazed and studded with cloves, and a cut-glass dish of home-bottled peach pickles to eat with it.  All around the ham, Profondita Raddus is setting out platters of breads and cheeses and pies.  There’s a cask at the ready, and a tall jug of fresh milk, surrounded by a collection of glasses and tin cups.

Behind her, Hiram and the three boys are tending to a bonfire in the paddock, and laying out chops to grill, and potatoes to bake in their jackets, in the embers.

“Welcome, welcome!” Profondita calls happily.  “Oh Jyn, your pretty dress, from where did you get this?”

Jyn has stood up in the wagon; she spreads out her skirts with a flourish and curtseys to the compliment.  “It’s my wedding dress.  I’m so pleased I can still do it up!” She lets Bodhi jump her down; turns to Galen, who is still bouncing around, above her.  “Would you pass me down my baskets, please, dear?  - and then you can run and play – look, here come all the Antilles’ kids!”

Two wagonloads of them, the whole clan, chattering in a mixture of Dutch and English and carrying more offerings of food in baskets and covered plates.  Another wagon behind is the Pamlo sisters, and Saw; once again they’ve given him a lift.  He’s carrying a brace of whiskey bottles, and looks a good deal more cheerful than usual.  The sisters are singing, harmonising a little wildly on the high notes; _Joy to the world_ , an odd choice for the season but a cheerful tune nonetheless. 

Bodhi looks round at Cassian as he dismounts. “Sounds like the party’s already underway.” He nods towards the Pamlos.  “I’m guessing they came by way of Merrick’s and Saw bought a little extra for them all.  No harm done, I’m sure.”

Cassian grins shyly.  “I’m no teetotaller, to judge any man or woman for wanting a drink on a day off.”

He looks almost relaxed, for the first time since the brawl; practically the first time since he’s been here, indeed, if you discount the two of them capering around last night, near-hysterical with tiredness, over that bloody tree-stump... 

There’s a gleeful shrieking from the Antilles party as the four little ones leap down en masse and start to charge about.  Galen is soon caught up into their joy and the five of them go whooping and rushing into the meadow.  Cassian starts and stares at the racket.

“If you think they’re crazy now,” Bodhi tells him with a laugh “Wait till they’ve got a proper sugar rush on.”  He can see that Miriam Antilles is unloading another basket, and a sweet smell of caramel and cinnamon wafts towards him. “I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth myself but Galen has a passion for every kind of cake and candy.”

“He’s gonna be a happy boy, then.”

“Happy, and energetic.  There’ll be dancing later, that’ll burn some of it off.  Say, I hope we can persuade you to ask some of the ladies to take a turn about the meadow?  Jyn will dance with you, for sure; and Taris Pamlo, and Hendrijka Antilles.  Pretty girls, both of them, and they’ll be hoping for a partner.”  He stops himself before outright starting to match-make; Cassian’s eyes slid past him to Jyn when her name was mentioned, and have not removed from her. 

_No, don’t start to think such things.  Jealousy never helped any man on God’s good earth to anything but a heart-ache.  And Jyn is a good loyal wife.  Don’t wrong them both with such ideas._

The sisters have helped Saw down from their wagon, doing their best to be careful in the face of his unusual jollity and the associated increase in his clumsiness.  He comes stumping over, waving his crutch like a toy, with the bottles tucked under his other arm.  “Happy May Day, Rook, happy spring to you!  And you, eh, Mexican?  Welcome to the fiesta, no doubt you’ll enjoy yourself.  Get your belly filled, man, nothing of you but ribs and moustache.  Don’t mind me, we’re all friends here, heh?”

He swings his arm out untidily and Cassian just manages to dodge being prodded with the crutch.  Bodhi steers him away quickly, laughing. “Saw, old friend, how much of that whiskey have you had?”

“This?  Not touched it.  ‘s for the party.  We did pass by the saloon on our way –“

“I thought you might have –“

“But I didn’t stay long.” An emphatic thump of the crutch.  “Consideration for the girls!  They wouldn’t come inside, but I’m damned if I let all that rebel scum of Krennic’s turn me out of the only drinking hole for fifty miles.  Tried to tell me I’d no business taking myself in there.  As if Anton Merrick hadn’t been serving me these four years.  He has no problem with the colour of my money or the colour of my skin.  Unlike some.”

“Indeed.”  He’s trying to steer the old man over to the row of seats in the shade.  “I’m sure you’d like a rest after that hot ride in the sunshine.  Did you buy the sisters a drink too?”

“Just a wee cup before we left.  I didn’t want them to have to make shift, waiting too long for an old man like me, so I gave a toast to the Union and bought my contribution –“ he nods to the bottles, still just about in place under his free arm –“and I came along.  Didn’t even hit back when Krennic’s boys threw abuse at me.  Little whoreson turds.  You’d’ve been proud of me, young man.  Didn’t even give them a glance.  The sisters were waiting and I wasn’t going to ‘bandon them.  I’ve ‘bandoned too many folks in my time, God forgive my old bones…”  He sinks into a chair with a look of surprise.  “Well, thank you, Rook.  Mighty kind of you...  Near ‘most as kind as Tinny and Tarry.  They’re good girls,” he adds indulgently.  “Helped me get back aboard again like I was their grandpapa.  Anyhows.  Here’s to a good day for us all, heh?  Let me get one of these goddam bottles open.  I’ll see you at the eating?  You could both do with some feeding up.”

“I’ll bring you some pie,” Bodhi promises, moving away, noticing with relief that Cassian is following.  Drunk voluble Saw could come out with pretty much anything, and some of his anythings are less pleasant than others.  “Never seen him so chatty,” he says, and Cassian manages a weak grin in reply. 

They follow the Pamlo sisters over to the rest of the group, and the food and drink.

Like all parties it gets underway in eating and laughter, and passes quickly, into talk and good cheer over the remnants of the meal.  He sees Cassian standing back a little, and fights the urge to drag him into conversations.  All they have to talk about is about manure and rainfall, and what will any of that mean to him?  At least he came, and he’s had a drink and a plate of ham, and smiled at some jokes, and listened to Gerrit Antilles’ old stories of childhood on the polder.  He can’t be blamed for being cautious among people who know him only as the man at the centre of both the recent fights.  No-one has mentioned the brawl at the store last week, or anything else connected to Krennic and Empire Holdings, but it’s hard not to imagine it’s on everyone’s mind.   

All too soon the sun is halfway down the spring sky.  Everyone has had a glass or two, and the table of food is much depleted.  The younger children play some kind of tag-chase with forfeits while Wedge and the older Raddus boys stand listening while their parents talk crops and horse-flesh and speculate on the route of the coming railroad.  Conversations are growing somnolent and overfed, a lot of voices are tipsy now, and Saw is passing from talkative to downright melancholy.  When old Gerrit shuffles up to Hiram Raddus with his violin and orders him to “fetch your squeezybox” it takes a while for anyone to stir themselves to dance.

At least it gives the two musicians time to get tuned up and to have their annual discussion about whether to start with a fast tune or a slow one.

The adults heave themselves up from the benches or the grass, and children run about demanding a partner.  Bodhi saunters over to his wife at the big table.  Jyn has pulled a stout cotton apron over her dress and has been helping Profondita, slicing ham and dishing up pickles steadily for the last couple of hours.  Her face is flushed from cider.  At least as a married man he doesn’t need to search for a partner.  The prettiest woman in the place is his already.  “Jyn, honey, dance with me?”

“I’m all covered in grease!”

“Wipe your hands and come dance with me.  It’s a polka, come on!”

They dance, and Jyn smiles and gets more flustered and pink, and he is soon breathless and laughing at his own clumsiness.  Then they sit the next one out and he gets more cider for them.  In front of them as they drink, Galen and Gallia Antilles bob around very carefully at the edge of the straw-covered dance floor, through a waltz and a stately two-step.  He drinks another glass; Jyn shakes her head this time.

Cassian doesn’t dance at all, and it startles Bodhi how unfitting that seems.  Surely there’s someone who can bring his old friend out of his shell, this fine sunny day?  “Cassian!  Cassian, no dancing for you?” 

His voice sounds loud in his own ears.

“I don’t know the steps to any of these...” Cassian says quickly.

“Jyn will teach you,” Bodhi announces.  It’s the obvious solution and he’s full of good cheer at the thought.  “It’s not difficult, come on, have a try!”

Jyn tries to draw back but he pushes them together, and settles down again on his comfortable seat, drink in hand, to enjoy the spectacle.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning home from the party, Jyn reflects on the impossibility of her situation, and her own sense of guilt. The little family find unexpected visitors at their property.

_I am going to hell for this_ , Jyn thinks.  _But what else can I do?  I’m going to hell, but I’m in hell already._

She dances with him three times, with the afternoon passing happily around them, idling in music, down into evening.  Dances and smiles, feeling his arms around her again and his hands holding hers, as gentle and as strong as she remembered.  Never coercive, Cassian’s touch, never less than respectful and honourable, but always that quiet strength. 

And he hasn’t changed.  He holds her, dancing, as though she were a being immeasurably precious.  A princess; or a child.  No-one else, not even Bodhi, has ever held her, has ever cherished her, so.

_Dear Lord, help me, I love him still.  I love him and I’m lying to him.  Denying him something he has every right to; something he should know about, something that is **his**.  _

_But I must protect my son, who is too young, and too innocent, to protect himself.  No-one’s rights can come ahead of Galen’s, and no-one’s hopes, or dreams, or regrets.  Not Cassian’s, and not mine.  God forgive me._

It’s late afternoon, the western sky pale and almost golden as the sun gets lower, when the dancing ends. 

She’s held herself in happiness, kept her heart quiet inside her, by some mixture, uncanny even to herself, of determination and hope and God-damned plain denial.  She’s danced and smiled, drunk her cider and eaten her fill of party food, hugged her precious son, her husband, her friends, and she has laced her fingers through those of her sometime ( _always_ ) beloved, and never let a flicker of pain or sorrow show on her face or in her voice.  But when Hiram and Gerrit ran out of tunes and laughingly told their audience to sit down for a rest, in the tiny pause before the dance floor slowly emptied, she’d looked up into Cassian’s face and seen something that made her tremble.  Happiness; frail, uncertain, adoring.  Next moment he’d released her hand and looked away, and when she glanced round, Bodhi was coming towards her; and she’d gone to him with relief and a fluttering shame. 

_This can never last.  I don’t want to let it go, it’s heaven on earth even though it’s taking me to hell; but it can never last and some part of it will break, soon, soon.  There’s too much from the past weighing us all down.  We can never be truly happy together, we three, we **four** , with all that is unspoken between us._

Her husband, holding her by the waist and pulling her close, laughing, pressing a large and affectionate kiss on her cheek.  His breath is warm and cidrous.  “Hah, gotcha, sweetest!”  Another firm buss, on her lips this time.  Someone claps and a child’s voice shouts “Whoo-whee, Mister Rook!”

Jyn dips her head, laughing weakly.  “Bodhi honey, you’re making me blush!”

He’s flipped her round a little, so they stand side by side and she can see that Profondita and Hiram are coming towards her, bearing a pair of painted canes hung with a canopy of green and blue ribbons.  Next moment, it’s being held over the two of them like a royal canopy.

“Happy anniversary!” Bodhi says, and tips her face up to kiss her again.  She can feel her face going hot as their neighbours whistle and call out their hurrahs.  Hands are clapping, the children giggling; and at the back of the group, as Hiram congratulates them on seven happy years together, she sees Cassian shrink into himself and move away.

As they make their sleepy way home, an hour later, in the violet light of sunset, he’s silent.  He rides beside the wagon again like a shadow.  Even when he clapped alongside the others, it had been with a wary mouth and downcast eyes.  Eyes that will no longer look her way, now.

Galen is sitting beside her, still half-rejoicing at all the good things of the day, but yawning on every other breath even as he chatters on.  His weight leans heavily against her side.  Bodhi is quiet too, bar an occasional murmur of good humour and sometimes a click of his tongue to the horses.  The spring dusk is settling fast, the sky now rose-pink, now peach-flesh, and a tiny silver scratch of a moon is rising in the north-west.  There are birds singing all around, in the brush and along the trees by the creek.

It’s so beautiful.  The valley and the distant hills, the birdsong; the land and the light, the town they’ve built and the friends who dance and celebrate with them.  For a woman who eight years ago had looked at her world collapsing into war and her life on the edge of ruin, who thought hell stood over her with a loaded gun, she’s had luck and good things aplenty.  She has so much to hold fast to and protect now.  But the things that might have been still call out from the distant past, like sirens in her mother’s old tales.

She danced three times with Cassian, and would have danced more; for a moment, then when the music stopped, she could have wished it to go on forever. _Keep this fine day from ending, let us always be joyful and innocent like this, let me never have to face what must come, the inevitable end, the sunset of these good years…_

“Mama?” Galen asks sleepily.  “Who’s that there?” 

“Who’s what where?” Jyn asks, and Bodhi straightens on the driving seat and looks around sharply. 

“Huh?” he says.

Cassian replies, and there’s not so much as a note of rest in his voice.  “By the farm.  There are four riders, and a fifth horse waiting with them.”  He nudges his own mount close to the wagon.  “I didn’t bring a weapon.  Did you?”

“No, of course not, not to the party.”

“Papa?  Cassian?  Are they bad men?”

“I can’t tell, son, not in this light.”  Bodhi looks at Jyn as she puts an arm protectively round her son; then at Cassian.  “I guess we’d better ride on, and find out, huh?”

Galen goes quiet, and it seems to Jyn that even the birds are singing less, as they cover the last few hundred yards to their home. 

The strangers have opened the gate of the property and ridden right up to the cabin; clean through the middle of her newly-planted vegetable patch.  In the poor light, it’s hard to identify them even when they’re close; one is the wretched messenger-bully Kallus, and when she screws up her eyes she can identify the others also as Krennic’s men.  The fourth horseman, she gradually realises, is a complete stranger. 

The fifth horse is Krennic’s.  The land manager of Star Ranch himself; he’s sitting on her bench, outside her home, as if the place is his already. 

Galen sits up straight, looking up at his papa for guidance and then like him staring bravely down at Krennic. 

When she looks the other way, Cassian is watching the new rider.  His eyes don’t flicker as he steers his horse through the gate and reins in at her side.  She thinks suddenly of the way a kestrel will hover in the changing wind, never once letting its gaze shift.  Even when Cassian dismounts, he doesn’t stop watching the stranger.

Nobody moves.  Up here on the driving box of the wagon, they have the advantage of height and clearly Bodhi is in no hurry to forego that and face the intruders on the ground.  So no-one moves except Cassian, and no-one speaks at all.

Finally it’s Krennic who stands up; sour-mouthed and frowning he says “I’ve come to offer you my final terms, Rook.  Don’t be a fool again, now, you’ve got a family to think of, man.  Let go this pride of yours, eh?  You must know what vanity it is.”

Bodhi says nothing.  Galen holds his chin up proudly.

Cassian bends to run a hand over his horse’s foreleg; still keeping his eye on the unknown man.

“Aren’t you even going to ask me what I’m offering?”

A pause, before Bodhi says “Seeing as you’ve come out this far, I figured you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Well, well, man, for God’s sake, what did I just say about pride?” Krennic gives a mirthless laugh.  “Very well, then.  Of course I’ll tell you.  Come now, let’s talk about this like men.  I can see you’ve put in a lot of work on this place; fine little house you’ve built, and the barn, the corral.  A lot of work.  Roots set down, hopes planted.  I can understand a man not wanting to abandon that.  I’m not without understanding of how it feels.  I was with Empire from the first, when we came out here, the first white men in this country; I was here when we were taming this valley.  I have roots here too, and hopes, you know that.  I don’t want to tread on any man’s rights.  But Empire Holdings brought peace here, where there’d been nothing but savage tribes and warfare and bloodshed.  Surely you must acknowledge that’s worth something?”

“You talk about rights,” Bodhi says after a moment. “But you seem to think you’ve got the right to say when anyone else has them.”

Krennic tuts.  “Now, now, surely you can see that’s unjust.  Come now, why must you be unreasonable?  Listen to my offer!  I’ll give you a fair price for everything you’ve got here, your land, your house and all.  A job with us at Star Ranch, a place among my men, you’ll be one of my direct lieutenants – I can see what you are, Rook, and what you could be, if you let me help you.  You could be a leader, you’ve a natural way with you.  Look how that Mexican fellow of yours follows you without a blink.  Indeed, I’ll tell you what – I’ll even give him a job too.  I know he’s cracked a few noses among my boys of late, and he’s a sight too quick to defend your little lady’s honour, but let’s just put that down to being a hot-head, eh?  The boy knows how to use his fists and I can use that.  So, what do you say?  A good price for your claim, and a new home; a stable job, a decent wage and guaranteed work, and a place for your man.  A chance for your young ‘un there to grow up with a secure place in the world, and go straight into a good solid job as well, soon as he’s old enough.  What do you say?”

As Jyn’s glance swings from her husband and son, sitting mute beside her, back to Cassian equally silent by his horse, she notices that Kallus, alone of the others, is also watching, not Krennic, but Cassian and the stranger.  There’s something tense and ill-at-ease in his cold face.

Bodhi says carefully “Will you make the same offer to the rest of the community?  A fair price, and a decently-paid job, for Hiram Raddus, for the Pamlo sisters, Raymus Antilles, old Saw?”

The stranger dismounts slowly and walks over to the pump.  Cassian’s eyes move with him.

Krennic scoffs good-humouredly.  “Come now, be reasonable.  You can’t very well expect Empire to rehome the whole damned valley.  Those are big families you’re talking about, I can’t possibly help them all; and surely you don’t look to us to help charity cases like the cripple and those two fool girls?  It’s just not good business sense.”

There’s a pail of drinking water already drawn, and a dipper hanging beside it; the strange rider takes the dipper and drinks from it, throws it down, moves back to his own horse again. 

He’s a tall man with a hard, tanned face and flat, oddly expressionless eyes.  There’s something unnerving about his movements, so very considered and slow.

Neither Cassian nor Kallus lets him out of sight for one second.

“Krennic,” Bodhi says carefully “I accept that you think you’ve made me a fair offer.  It’s more than I would have given you credit for, to come even that far.  But those people you’re dismissing are my friends; _our_ friends.  They’re the people who make Rogue the strong little community it is.  I know they wouldn’t abandon me if Jyn and Galen and I were in need.  I won’t abandon them, either.  It’s a matter of principle.  But I wouldn’t expect you to understand about such things.”

“Principle?  _Principle_?”  Krennic’s voice slowly goes to a hiss. “Good God, man, do you really think you’re in a position to play the ‘moral high ground’ card?  This is the West; the only _principle_ that matters here is the principle of nature herself.  The red tooth and the red claw, kill or be killed.  Don’t deceive yourself that anything else matters when it comes to it.  Every one of those so-called friends will save themselves rather than you.  Even that shifty tame Mexican of yours will know where his own interest lies, and you know it.  You should have more of an eye to the thief right at your own door and less of a high-and-mighty way with you about me and mine.”  He stands and steps down from the stoop, shaking out the folds of his white duster angrily.  “I’ve made my last offer, Rook.  I won’t come again.”

“That’s good, then.  We understand one another.  Finally.”

“Indeed we **do**.”  Krennic stamps across to the free horse and pulls himself up into the saddle.  “Come on, lads, leave this little household to their fun.”

The others turn their horses, ready to head away.  The stranger remounts, even more unnervingly slowly than he had got down.  Watching, and watched by, Cassian.

From the corner of her eye, Jyn can see Kallus still glancing back and forth across the group, trying to take everyone’s measure.

As the party rides off, Cassian edges his animal round so as to keep his eye on them until they’re far off, just dots heading away in the moonlight.

“Well,” Bodhi says with a heavy exhalation.  “Now I’ve burned our bridges.”

“You’ve done the right thing,” she tells him.  Puts all her faith and strength into the words, all her loyalty for the man who’s stood by her without hesitation for all this time.  “You know you have.”

“I hope so.”

“I think you were wonderful, papa,” says Galen stoutly.

“Thank you, son.”

They’re all still sitting on the driving bench, in the near-darkness.  Her tiredness and the lingering tipsiness of the day are gone, and the poison of some of Krennic’s innuendoes is starting to bite.

But there’s nothing for it.  “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go inside.” She starts to climb down, pulling her skirts clumsily out of the way of the wheel spokes  Suddenly Cassian is behind her, holding up a hand to steady her descent.  He helps Galen off the wagon as well, while Bodhi is swinging down on the far side.  In the tiny moment before they must unhitch the team, he leans close to her.  “Jyn. I know you want to support Bodhi, but things have just got a lot more serious.” He straightens and lifts his voice again. “We have a new problem.  That man with Krennic –“

“Why? Who was he?”  It’s true that he had seemed to know the stranger, but then why didn’t they speak to one another?  Jyn’s heartbeat seems to be in her fingertips suddenly.  She takes hold of Galen by his shoulders, as if to steady him.  Or herself. 

“Yeah,” says Bodhi, looking across from the head of the nearside horse.  “I couldn’t see for sure, but if I’m not mistaken, you two seemed familiar with one another.”

Cassian nods.

“How do you know him?” Jyn asks.  The cider and rich food of the afternoon lie uncomfortable on her heart, acid and cold as regret. 

“He’s a gunslinger.  His name is Fett, Wilson Fett.  He and his twin brother used to work as guns for hire, all along the Rio Colorado, both sides of the border.  Between them they’ve killed over a hundred souls; men, women, even children.  Mexicans, Americans, Natives, they don’t care so long as they’re paid.”  His eyes are very dark in the shadows of the sickle moon.  “Even if Krennic’s only bought one of them, it means this fight has changed, and not in our favour.  Fett is a killer.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian struggles with regrets and self-doubt, and nightmares. The morning brings a tragedy.

Long after Cassian has said his goodnights, that evening, and is lying on the hayloft as usual, with his blanket round him and his head pillowed on sweet-smelling straw, he still feels his heart pounding; and his blood coursing like a river in spate, his brain urging him to speed and watchfulness.  He can’t let go of the words he heard, the tight way the very air seemed to fall around Fett, the familiar ice-cold gaze.  Dear God Almighty, if this is what Empire mean to do, what use can he be?  He’s a good shot and he’s fast, and he’s killed men before; and he’s willing to kill again, to defend Jyn and Galen and Bodhi, and their friends, this community that has begun to admit him where he’d never looked for welcome anywhere, ever again; if he must, he’ll kill for them all.  But Fett will kill too; and if both brothers are here, he can’t keep two men in his sights.  Wilson and Robert Fett; Billy and Boba, the hounds of the Yuma trail.  Men with faces like masks and eyes like glaciers, and hands steady as the winter horizon. 

_I cannot protect my friends, I cannot promise to save them all, not against men like that.  God help me, help me Lord, please, I beg of you, help me.  What must I do?  How can I help my family?_

_My family?  What is this? – am I insane now, a madman as well as blind and a sinner? I have no family._

_It’s been so long since I had anywhere to call home, anyone to hold in loyalty and love.  I never knew, never let myself see, what that hope could mean.  What it could have been.  My life, if I’d chosen it.  If I’d stayed with what was once was mine._

_But they aren’t mine; not **this** family, not **this** home._

He turns over, hitching the blanket around himself, trying to settle in the thick hay.  He’s cold, despite the mild night; he cannot feel comfortable.  Cannot feel his way clear.

Is he blinding himself to what must come?  Is it so hard to let himself see the path ahead?

_I must save Jyn.  I must save Galen, save Bodhi.  I must do everything in my power for them, even if it damns me.  At least maybe that way, I can finally atone for my sins; for all I did in the war at home, and all I did not do for Jyn._

_I’m a man who’d seduce a girl and then leave her, and be glad she told him to go.  I gave her a Valentine and she looked at me as though I was a hero and told me to go and fight for my country, and I was happy to ride off, and I thought myself a fine fellow, as I left behind everything I’d loved, because I was going to serve a cause I knew I believed in._

_Lord, forgive me my arrogance, my folly.  My youth._

_The past is so long ago.  Seven long years, more or less.  Seven years and what, three, no, not quite three months…_

_I must not be bitter, that Jyn saw so soon I was no hero; that she married my best friend before a quarter of the year had gone by.  She made the right choice, God knows she did.  I promised to come back to her, but she must have seen from my letters how long it would be.  Perhaps she even saw more than that.  My arrogance, my folly, my youth, so in love with glory and the freedom of my country that I would ask my girl to wait years for me.  I must not be bitter._

_Her hand felt so right in mine, today.  But she can never be mine again..._

Jyn’s dreaming hands are tender and strong and he runs to their touch gladly; her eyes are cool and round and thoughtful, green as marble, wet-bright as pebbles in a mountain creek.  She’s all brightness, so young, so very young, like the year itself this chilly February morning, she’s all brightness in the bright day, sunny and full of light, but her eyes are wet with tears.  She’s weeping and smiling as she hugs him round the neck and says _Goodbye, goodbye, my darling, I’ll wait for you_ ; and he wants to stay, wants to make the other choice, this time; but his hands come up and unlatch her loving arms, because _La libertad, mi patria, mis compatriotas_.  Freedom, my country, my people, they’re all calling me, Jyn, I have to go.  You know I do.  I choose them over you.  But I will come back.  I will always love you.  And she says _I know_.  Proudly.  Confidently, gladly; because he loves her and she knows it.

Then he’s clutching the scrappy pen he used to carry in his rucksack, and a bit of thin paper, writing her name, trying not to cry with fear; twenty-one and going into battle once again, wanting to say goodbye to the girl who’d loved him and never written, never once written, because he’s never stopped dreaming of her arms and praying to go home to her.  _Mi patria, mis compatriotas_ ; but the truth is that home was always Jedhaville in his heart, and Jyn, who was waiting there.  She loved him and she knew him, surely she must still remember, even though she’d never replied to his letters.

And then he’s lying in his cell in Oaxaca, captive, broken, a prisoner of war, and the misery of the French occupation never ends, never ends, he’s never going to see the daylight again, Jedhaville and Jyn are so far away he cannot remember the colour of her eyes or the taste of her tears, the touch of her lips, the clasp of her arms; he knows that once she held him, once she loved him, but no more, no more, never again, never ever…

He wakes with a bright light in his eyes, the nightmare telling him thieves and danger, someone coming for his blood, and he scrabbles for the splinter of sharp wood he used to keep under the paillasse; but his hand falls on the handle of a Colt hand-gun instead and he remembers.  He’s a free man, and no-one killed him in prison, though he scored more than one cheek with that splinter, and bled more than one throat.  

But this light is morning, not an enemy but daylight; a sunny day, the second of May. 

_Time to get up, stick your nightmare-soaked head under the pump, and try to plan how you will find something practical to do, to help the people you love.  How you will keep the hound of Yuma from sinking his teeth into them.  Krennic’s new dog.  His new killer._

**

It’s almost noon, and the smell of sourdough bread baking is coming in sweet snatches from the open door of the cabin.  Cassian and Galen have been working together all morning, preparing stakes and pegs for the fencing while out away across the paddock Bodhi strings up wire onto the posts they’ve already sunk and fixed together.  All the time, as the little boy chatters happily away, he can see his old friend silhouetted against the big pale sky. 

For a time, Jyn was nearby too, on her hands and knees sorting out the wreckage of her vegetable patch, replanting the uprooted onions and smoothing down disturbed seedbeds.  Now she’s inside, cooking the midday meal.

He looks down as Galen falls silent; marvels again at the child.  Such glossy dark chestnut hair; darker than Jyns but not as dark as Bodhi’s raven-wing black.  He’s going to be a handsome young man one day, it’s plain to see.  

“What is it, Galen?”

The little boy has stood up, and now he raises one arm and points.  “Why’s Mr Raddus coming?”

Cassian sets down the hatchet he’s been using to trim a post and looks round, squinting into the distance in the direction of town.  Yes, there is indeed a wagon coming, and the tall Swede is driving hell for leather, standing to the reins and plying the whip, pushing the horses fast enough to kick up a thin skein of dust into the air.  Cassian scrambles up from the ground.  “Galen, go get your papa!  Quickly now!” Then hurries to the door of the cabin.  “Jyn?  Jyn!”

“Papa, Papa, Cassian wants you!” Behind him, the little voice rises clear and anxious, catching and flying in the puffs of the spring breeze as Galen runs out to Bodhi.

Jyn appears, rubbing her hands on her apron.  “What’s happening?”  She sees the wagon approaching and raises a hand to shield her eyes from the glare.  “What on earth? – is that Hiram?  He’s driving like a madman…”

Across the big field, Galen reaches his father and is talking to him; Bodhi straightens, looks, and comes running. 

By the time the wagon is within earshot, they are all standing side by side at the main gate to the property.  And Hiram is yelling, his voice high with alarm, and still wielding the whip.  He is almost on them before suddenly he seems to recall what he’s doing and reins-in the exhausted team. 

“They killed Saw, they killed Old Man Saw!”  He lurches and almost falls from the front of the wagon as it jerks to a halt.  His voice sounds choked.  “They killed him!  It was a trap!”

Jyn is the first one to move, running to him with her apron flapping, scrambling up on the spokes of one wheel.  She looks down into the wagon bed and recoils.  Cassian and Bodhi hurry over.  “Stay back, son,” Bodhi warns as Galen comes after them, and when the little boy makes to come close he stays to hold him back from the wagon.  His face is grim.

Cassian grips the other side of the arc of wheel-spokes; climbs up next to Jyn.  Sees what she sees.

The old man is lying dead on the spread folds of his coat.  There’s no sign of his crutch, and six bullet holes have been close-drilled in his vest; six circles of red, lying over his heart.  His eyes are still open and he looks angry and defiant, and oddly surprised. 

“What happened?” asks Jyn softly.  She’s still standing up on the wheel, still holding the rim.  Her hands are very close to Cassian’s.  He can see her knuckles are pale as she clings on.  “Hiram, talk to me,” she says. “What the hell happened?”

In shaking phrases the Swede gasps out the tale: Saw hobbling over to his place to ask for a ride into town, the two of them making their way there peacefully, and then at the store “that new man of Krennic’s” deciding for no provocation at all to tell Saw that from now on he would not be served in Rogue.  “We had done nothing, nothing I’m saying to you, nothing to upset him, but all he would do was mock and throw such abuse.  He called the old man a nigger, to his face, a nigger and a slave.  You know Saw.  He fought a good while to control himself but there are things he would never abide to be called and that was the crown of it.  He called the man a liar and a filthy reb and went to draw on him.”

“And Fett shot him.” Cassian can feel his skin crawl at the thought.  Fett can only have been hired for one thing; and he’s begun work already.

Hiram Raddus nods brokenly in assent.  His voice shakes and he has tears on his cheeks. “Poor Saw never had a chance, his soldiering days were long behind him and this boy – this new boy, he is fast!  Bodhi, he was so very fast.  My poor old friend!  Only yesterday he was having such a good day, I know he drank too much but he had a good time – you do think he had a good time, don’t you, at the party?  I should never have agreed to go with him today but he seemed so cheerful and since he’d come all the way over to our place I didn’t have heart to refuse him.  And now he is dead.  May God be with him.  They were waiting for us, they are waiting for us to show our faces again, I know it, I’m telling you.  It’s a trap!”

There’s nothing to be done.  Cassian jumps down again, acutely aware of the lack of a gun at his hip today.  He isn’t even carrying the hatchet.  If Fett were to appear now, they’d all be dead.

Jyn climbs down from the wheel as well, moving slowly as if she doesn’t trust her own hands’ grip.  “Where are you going to take him?” she asks in a low voice.

“I don’t know.  Back home, I suppose.  He will have to be laid to rest and he has no family to take care of such things; perhaps we can bury him on the farm, to avoid any more trouble.”

“No,” says Bodhi.  His voice is quiet, and quietly certain.  “Saw will be buried on Cemetery Hill just like every other citizen of this town that has passed on.  Hiram, if you and Profondita can prepare his remains, I’ll make sure things are done as they should be.  We owe this man a debt of honour, for the war he fought in and the courage of his death.  Carry him back home.  You’re a good man, Hiram, you couldn’t have prevented this.  Come on, Jyn; we’re going to need to get word to the other families.”

Her face is resigned as she nods.  “We’ll come and see you tomorrow.  The mourners will need someplace to gather, something to eat.  Tell Profondita I’ll do what I can to help.”

“I will, I will.  May God be with us.  Oh, these are bad times, bad times, Bodhi.”

They watch as he pulls the horses round and sets off again, driving homewards slowly now, as if all the fight has burned out of him in the telling.

“I’m going into town,” says Bodhi sharply as the wagon draws out of sight behind a new cloud of dust. “Don’t try to stop me, Jyn.”

She doesn’t; she’s staring at the cold expression on his face as if she’s never seen her husband before.

Cassian says “Don’t be a fool, Bodhi.  Don’t you see this is what they want?  To pick people off one by one?  The only hope this town has is if you all stand together and act together, you know that.  Bodhi!  You’ve known that from the start, it was you who preached that gospel to me!  They want you to be angry.  Angry men make bad choices.”

Bodhi’s face is implacable, glaring him down.  “Really?  You’re reminding me of the stand I’ve been making?  You, who never stood your ground in your life?”

“Bodhi, that’s not fair.” Jyn’s voice is low, hurt, she raises a hand gently to her husband’s sleeve.

“Papa?  Please don’t be angry,” says Galen in a small voice; and it’s this, at last, that gets through to Bodhi.  He knots both hands into fists for a moment and then slowly unclenches them.

“You’re right.  Oh God!  That poor old man, insulted by some hired murderer and shot like a dog.  It makes me want to kill every last one of them.  But we have to see Saw decently buried.  And this will shake the other families, shake them to the foundations.  I’ve never seen Hiram cry before.  Oh God, what will become of us?”

He puts a hand in front of his face, and after a moment Cassian realises he is weeping, too.  They stand at the gate, beleaguered and very alone, in the bright hard light of noon.


	15. Chapter 15

There is no church in Rogue, and no preacher nearer than Coreville, but the townsfolk have conducted their own buryings from time to time when the need arises.  There’s a box been made, large enough for the old man’s burly corpse, and it’s been lined with plain linen and closed-up with good iron nails, so old Saw can be laid to rest with some semblance of dignity. 

They’ve dug a deep grave cut and they set him in the ground, and the men take turns to shovel in silence, until the red earth is mounded up over him.

Old Gerrit Antilles has brought his violin to the funeral, and Wedge his harmonica; they play a wavering hymn tune for the mourners to sing to.  The voices are bright and sharp in the morning air.  Cassian recognises the words of the twenty-third psalm, though he doesn’t know the melody.

The breeze snatches the sound and tosses it about, like a child tossing a feather in play.  And then there’s only quiet again, and the small lonely sound of Taris Pamlo trying to suppress her tears.

Bodhi steps forward, holding his hat nervously.  He looks round the little gathering.  Cassian hears him clear his throat before he speaks.

“We all knew old Saw.  He wasn’t always the most easy of neighbours, I think we all met his temper.  He’d had a hard life and it had made him hard in himself, in some ways.  He spoke his mind, he didn’t suffer fools gladly, nor men he disagreed with.  But for all that, Saw Gerrera was a man who stood for some of the best things about mankind.  He’d survived so much, and every time life cut him down, when it took his freedom, when it took his family and his hopes for the future, every time, he stood up and carried on.  He must have been near fifty years of age when the war came, he could with honour have stayed back home in the north, in the freedom he’d risked everything to gain.  But he stood up proudly and answered the call to battle.  Old Saw fought shoulder to shoulder with three hundred other brave men who’d taken up the fight for their people’s freedom, in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.  We know he was wounded more than once, I’m sure we’ve all heard him boast of how it was always in the front, that he’d never turned his back on an honourable fight.”

There’s another little sob from Taris.  Somewhere behind the line of people, a horse whickers and snorts softly.  The wind blows and stills again in the dry grass. 

“So, now he’s died the same way he lived.  Shot in the front, defying those who would put him down.  We’re here to mourn a soldier who fought for all of us, even if sometimes he fought _with_ some of us, too.  Saw Gerrera kept his eyes on the sad truth that you can never stop fighting, because some battles are never wholly won.”

Unhappy eyes look down at the new grave, and up at Bodhi.

Most of the mourners have put together some kind of dark clothing, deep blue and brown, olive green, rusty black.  Jyn is one of the few with a formal black mourning dress.  Little Galen was standing beside her earlier, but he’s slipped away, bored by the long wait till all the earth was shovelled back.  From the back of the little gathering Cassian can see him and the smallest of the Antilles children, crouching down with their heads together.  He moves quietly closer; but far from making any kind of mischief, they’re intent on watching a shiny beetle in the grass.

Bodhi’s voice carries on, careful and determined. “He fought to make this a country where no child would be sold or harmed as his had been, where every man and woman could make a free life in peace and raise their family.  We owe it to him to carry on with that fight.  You know it, and I know it.”

Uneasy fidgeting, murmurs of doubt and alarm.

Cassian looks round; past the unhappy faces near him, past the preoccupied children and the line of waiting wagons and buggies and horses, their reins hitched to the rough post-and-rail fence of the burial ground.  Cemetery Hill is only a low rise in the ground, crowned with a dozen simple crosses.  It overlooks Merrick’s General Stores and Emporium, and the adjacent saloon.

Anton Merrick must be minding both store and bar today, for his wife is here among the funeral party, standing tall and grave just behind Jyn.

A gang of men are down by the store, watching from the saloon benches on the town’s little stretch of sidewalk.  They stare up at the funeral as though it were being conducted for their entertainment.  Empire’s thugs, seven or eight of them.  He recognises Krennic by his white duster coat, and the cold face of Billy Fett beside him.  A little further along, Kallus sits alone, nursing his pistol.  Alone of the group, he’s watching, not the mourners, but his own companions.

Beyond there’s just open country, green with spring grasses.  He can see cattle grazing, far off, and a cluster of shingled roofs that must be First Star Ranch, Krennic’s base.

It all looks peaceful and calm, in the sunshine, in the quiet of the morning. 

Bodhi’s voice strengthens against the unease around him.  “We’re laying a man to rest today who helped make this little community what it is.  Inclusive, brave, determined to stick together.  Let’s honour his memory by carrying on our lives as he lived.  By staying here to fight, to make this a safe place for our children to grow up.”

Cassian watches two of Krennic’s men move away from the main group; not strolling but brisk and purposeful.  They stop for a moment by Kallus, and he raises his head, to answer a question perhaps.  They’re too far off to make out anyone’s expression, but it seems that Kallus shakes his head; twice, the second time with emphasis.  After a moment more the other two move away, heading towards the stables at the back of the saloon. 

A voice is raised behind him, hoarse and tense.  Tynnra Pamlo, no longer consoling her sister.  “You talk about carrying on Saw’s fight, like that’s gonna be a simple thing to do and an easy choice to make.  But we’ve seen how far these folks are prepared to go.  Isn’t this just asking us all to die now?”

“No!  Now more than ever we need to stick together and show them we aren’t intimidated!”

“But we _are_!  I didn’t work myself to the bone in servitude, I didn’t endure for twenty years as a slave like the children of Israel, endure my whole life just to wind up leading my sister to her grave now we are free!  How can you ask us to take a risk like this?  You ain’t never had to fight the way we’ve fought, if you think it’s that easy!”

Other voices rise, joining in as Bodhi tries to answer, and for a moment Saw’s burial becomes an open argument.  From what little Cassian had seen of the old man it would have amused him.

Oblivious, Galen and the little girl are now crouching right down, poking at the beetle with blades of grass and their fingertips.  Or Galen’s fingertips, anyway.  “He’s gonna nip you,” Gallia Antilles is saying. “Nip you with his nippers!”

“I’m not scared of some mean old bug.  Wow, look at him go!”  Galen pokes again.  “Ooh, he’s so fast!”

“He’s got so many legs!”

Their world is so small and full of fascination.  But beyond them, two figures on horseback are riding out of town now, heading onto the same trail the sad little funeral procession came down just an hour ago.  Cassian’s frown tightens as he watches.  Apart from the farms, that path leads nowhere except into the hills.  First Star Ranch is the other way, the road to Coreville likewise.

He sidles round to where Hendrijke and Miriam Antilles are standing at the back of the group, listening dispiritedly to the anger at the graveside.  It’s their father shouting now, and their elder brother’s sweetheart shouting back.  The unity of Rogue is fragmenting more by the minute; Empire could not have wished for more if they’d been granted magical powers.

Under the discordant voices  he murmurs “Ladies, I need to ask you something – which is the first homestead on the way back?  Is it Saw’s farm?”

Hendrijke looks up at him with huge blue eyes and an embarrassed flush of admiration.  It’s her younger sister who says “No, Mister Andor, it’s the Pamlo place.  Why?”

The little ones are still absorbed in their shiny bug, and the horses and vehicles are still waiting in the bright sun, the cold wind, as Cassian and the two girls turn.  Hendrijke puts a pink hand on his sleeve, clutching, saying “Oh!” with her soft mouth.

There’s smoke rising from the distance, flames licking the timber walls of the first farm in the valley.

Cassian curses under his breath and pulls away, to run into the middle of the row of quarrelling mourners.  “Fire!  Fire!  Over there, look!  Whose place is that?  **_Fire!_** ”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The community rallies together. But in the aftermath of the fire, Bodhi is tortured by doubts. In a moment of weakness something is said that cannot be unsaid.

So sudden, the shift from discord and despair and angry faces all around, into the blank uniformity of horror.  Just one moment ago Bodhi was deep in a growing quarrel and now he can hear himself panting in the silence.   Everyone stares down into the valley, to where smoke is pouring from the Pamlo sisters’ farm.

They waste their energy, their anger, on one another, while the first of their homes is already burning; if Krennic had written the story himself he could not have planned it better.  But there’s a chance to turn this story around, and spit on his malevolence.  There’s always a chance, if they just dare to take it.

He draws a harsh breath and shouts “Everyone, come on!  Let’s move!  If we hurry we can still put it out…”

Taris Pamlo is crying while Tynnra curses like a man; they’ve stumbled to their wagon and are struggling to get it and the horses unhitched.  From behind him Jyn darts over to help the sisters and together they pull the team around.  Voices rise to left and right, weeping and shouting and swearing; “Hell!  Those sons of bitches! – do they think they can just? – we gotta get down there!”

Yes.  Already.  _These are good people_ , he thinks.  _We **do** all pull together, the moment we are truly driven to it we all pull for one another.  This is what we have, this little community, this is real.  _ And then _We have to get there in time._  

They do, in so far as they arrive before the entire farm is ashes.  But the Pamlo place is much the smallest of the claims and the cabin is only wood planks and cedar shingles.  The fire had already taken hold long before the first riders reach it.  The whole roof is blazing.

Frantic and angry, but focussed now and unified again, they work to get the livestock clear and save as much as they can, the main shell of the building, the outbuildings, the furnishings and stores.  The thugs have already driven off the hens and trampled a seedbed into mud, just like Jyn’s little vegetable garden. 

With a desperate bucket chain they bring water from the creek to put out the blaze before it can reach the byre.  But long before the sun sets on their exhaustion it’s clear that as much has been salvaged as can be.  Half the cabin is gone, the roof burned off utterly and the entire south wall just smouldering charcoal.   The sisters stand side by side, holding one another to stay upright and staring at the remaining timbers, with their life’s possessions piled around them.  A table and two stools, a trunk of bedding and clothes, and two hammocks; a spade and a hoe, some kitchen pots and pans stacked haphazard one in another, and a few jars and sacks of stored food-stuffs.

So little.

Galen is carrying a chicken under his arm and Jyn urges him over to the sisters.  He holds the bird out, his hands very gentle, calming it.  “I found one of your hens, Miss Tynnra.  And next time ours have chicks you can have some of them.”

“Thank you, dear,” says Tynnra, sounding dazed as a shell-shocked rifleman.  “That’s real nice.”  She takes the bird carefully from him, but her face is still inconsolable.  Young Wedge has come up behind her, but instead of offering oaths and embraces he stands respectfully at her back, quietly there and saying nothing until wanted.

So this is it; the community of Rogue, less than two dozen of them, from children to old men.  Exhausted, filthy, sooty, sweating.  In some faces there’s a note of triumph, at a fight well-fought, a blaze controlled before it did far worse damage.  But even the youngest and most hopeful look bruised and apprehensive as well.

How can they possibly be enough?

**

It’s long after dark when at last he drives the wagon, and Jyn and a half-asleep Galen, home.  Cassian rides beside them, silent on his black horse, watchful eyes scanning the horizon in the vast moonlight.  They’ve left the sisters to the improvised hospitality of the Antilles clan; their belongings packed into their small wagon, their animals and the Dutch family’s all herded together for the night.

The law is three days’ ride away; and even if the Marshall were to deputise someone trustworthy, there’s no evidence to prove who set the fires.  None, even, to prove it was arson.

They started with old Saw, now the sisters; the Jebels already ran; that leaves Raymus Antilles and his folks, and Hiram Raddus and his; two large families of white Europeans, and his own little one.  His little, mixed-race, family.  Just the three of them.  Four if they count Cassian.  If they can count on him.

It makes Bodhi cold inside, to think of Krennic, and Empire, getting away with this.  If they’re not stopped, this could be just the beginning.  Anger eats into him, anger and fear, biting like winter ice, the urge to ride out and face his enemy, to fight instead of striving for a peaceful way through.

_I want to have it out with that worm Krennic.  Tell him once and for all that this must stop. **Make** him stop, if he will not listen._

_How the hell do I do that?_

_But it **must** stop.  Somehow I have to stop him._

_How much longer before the others start to break?  Can I count on them?  And what of Cassian?  He’s turned coward once before, left me to help the ruin he left and the heart he broke.  Can I really trust him, now, with all of our lives?_

_It is our lives, there can’t be any doubt as to that.  We’ll be the next target.  No point in pretending otherwise.  Jyn says the others look up to me and I don’t see it; but we’re the smallest group now, the most vulnerable; and with the black folks and the Jewish family gone or on the run, we’re the obvious choice to attack next._

_God Almighty, guide me, help me, Lord!  I don’t know what to do!_

The moon is well above the horizon when they arrive back at the farm at last.  When he looks round he finds Galen has fallen asleep in Jyn’s lap.  He looks so small, suddenly, and vulnerable, with his eyes closed, his hair and clothes all rumpled and sooty.  Jyn looks half-asleep, holding him.  Her face is lost in the moonlight, her hands grimy with soot and ash. 

“Jyn?” It’s Cassian’s voice.  Very gentle.  He’s already dismounted and opened the gate; now he’s standing by the wagon, looking up at Jyn where she sits slightly slumped over, cradling her boy. “Do you need a hand?  I can take him if you like.”

Bodhi stands up stiffly from the driver’s box. “No, it’s okay.  I’ll take him, Jyn.”  He climbs over and bends to lift the little sleepy body gently.  His son.  Small brown hands grasping sleepily at his shirt and a wordless murmur of protest at being moved.  Jyn stares at him as he climbs down from the wagon with Galen’s head on his shoulder.  When he looks back, Cassian has already melted away in the silvery light, gone on ahead to take care of the horses. 

He carries Galen up to the darkened house and takes him inside; heads into the box room.  There’s no warm water for him to wash; but it would be mean to wake him anyway when he’s so exhausted, and what harm will it do if he sleeps with a grubby face for once?  He turns down the covers clumsily with one hand and lowers the child into bed, unlaces his boots as carefully as he can and slips them off to set them on the floor under the frame.  Draws the white sheets, the warm blanket and quilt, gently up.  Galen sleeps through without a flicker.  When Bodhi pulls the shutters closed, the room is plunged into darkness, only a rim of moonlight showing round the window.  For a moment all he can hear is the little flutter of his son’s precious breath.

_Whatever happens, I will never allow anyone to harm you.  Never._

As he makes his way slowly back towards the open doorway he hears Jyn’s voice ahead. “Please would you pass me the lamp there, Cassian?”  There’s a tiny pause and she adds “Thank you.”

Her tone is warm, with the slightly diffident kindness of long affection, of knowing the person you address will always be there when you say their name.  Bodhi looks into the main room without speaking.

She’s kneeling beside the iron stove.  The lower door is open and he can see by the glow that she must have been raking up the embers and blowing on them; now she’s holding up a lighted spill, with her hand cupped round it to shield the flame from blowing out.  Cassian crouches by her, holding out one of the oil lamps with the glass upraised, and they both watch as if rapt as Jyn touches the flame to the wick and holds it till it takes.  The reflected light is warm gold on their skin, their eyes.  He can’t miss it, the moment their gaze slides from the lit lamp to one another, and stays.

The flame on the slip of birchwood in Jyn’s hand burns slowly down, consuming, silent.  It has almost reached her before she feels the heat, and looks down; quickly she shakes it till it is extinguished.  The lamplight gleams on her hair, her cheek, the side of her neck.  Slowly, almost shyly, she looks up at Cassian again.

“Jyn,” Bodhi says.  Softly, so as not to wake Galen.  Kindly, so as not to show that he’s been watching.  Kindly, he hopes.  His voice feels thin and dry, a reed at the end of winter.

Both Jyn and Cassian startle and look round at him, and Cassian gets up quickly.  He places the lit lamp on the table; grabs up his hat from where he’d thrown it on a seat and goes out of the door without speaking.

There’s a pause before Jyn gets up from the floor, pushing the stove door shut with one shoe.  “Is Galen asleep?”

“Yes.”

She goes to take the second lamp from its hook on the wall.  “Why did you stop Cassian from taking him, when we got back?”

“It’s my job to take care of my family.”

Even as the words come out, wind-bleached, wire-taut, he can’t quite believe it.  _I just said that?_  

Jyn is staring, mute with surprise.  _Yes, I just said that.  In that voice._  

She swallows.  Looks away.  Takes another birchwood spill from the jar on the mantelshelf.  Lights the second lamp slowly before speaking again.  “You know you can trust him.”

“Yes.  Yes of course I do.” It’s an automatic response, almost as if there’d been time for it to become a habit, so often he’s said the same thing to himself; but the unchannelled anger seethes up again, and more words burst out. “But I – Jyn – Jyn, it isn’t about trust.  Not just trust.  We have to accept that he could leave again at any time.  No –“ as she shakes her head, refusing to look at him -“No, Jyn, he _could_.  He has nothing to keep him here.  Nothing real.  And that’s right.  That’s as it should be.” 

It isn’t all he wants to say, not the whole truth of him at all; but it is _a_ truth for all that.  Cassian has nothing to keep him with them and he could ride off, back to his own country and his own people, any day he chose.  They cannot, must not, rely on him.

“No.” Jyn sounds shocked.  “You’re misjudging him.  Cassian won’t let us down.  You saw how hard he worked today, putting the fire out, working with the rest of us.  As hard as any man of the valley.  He’s one of us now.  Why are you doubting him?”

“He _isn’t_ one of us.  Not really.”  He wants to be blind to it, again.  But he can’t, now he’s said it.  Cassian was the one who left, before; and the dark cruel truth is, the only real reason he might stay is for Jyn, and the past.  In the end, he’s going to see that he’s holding on to a fistful of dust.  The past is dead and cannot be restored to life.  “We have no guarantee he’ll stay.”

“I trust him,” Jyn insists.

She still won’t look him in the eye.  Bodhi waits.  The room is silent apart from the whispering of the two flames in the two lamps, and the sigh of an ember crumbling in the belly of the stove.  He waits, and she looks resolutely at the table.

“He’s been back with us for less than a month,” he says at last “And you trust him more than me.”

“No.  Bodhi, no.  Not _more_ , it’s – it’s different, it’s not like _that_ –“

“No.  No, I think it is.”  The traitorous words won’t silence themselves.  He’s silenced himself so many, many times.  And this – this hurts.  “He _could leave again_ , Jyn, you know it and so do I!”

“Not this time!”  Her voice is still quiet, but a shade of heat enters it.  “I don’t believe it!  Why don’t you trust him?”

“Why should I?”

She’s been standing very still, but now suddenly she jolts as if the wind has just hit her, and moves away, swinging quickly past him to take down the third lamp.  “This is exactly how Krennic wants you to think!  Divide and rule, isn’t that it?  Make you doubt your friends, make you mistrust the people who’ve stood loyal, make you feel alone, so we’ll be weak, helpless –“

“Stood loyal?” His voice is going sharp and hard again, and he realises it’s getting louder as well.  Puts out an arm to pull the door of the box room shut quickly, before they disturb Galen.  “Are you really telling me – telling _me_ , Jyn? – who has been loyal?”

“That’s not what I meant!” she says bitterly.  “You know that’s not what I meant, Bodhi.”

His voice softens, but he can’t let it go, somehow it’s still burning at him, as if he’d stuck his hand into one of those lamp flames and held it there, just high enough to escape the full agony but still too hot, too hot, a sting like the sun. “Really?  Because I still remember, even if you don’t –“

“Bodhi, no –“

“Holding you while you cried.  Jyn, while you _cried until I thought you would faint_.  And all the while I loved you and would have given anything to heal your pain.  Anything.  Even brought him back to you.  But the only thing I could do was hold you while you suffered.  Because if he didn’t come back when _you_ begged him, if he didn’t come back for _your_ letters, for you and your _child_ , what use was it for _me_ to write or beg him or even ride after him?  He left you.  He left you both, and I didn’t.  Have you forgotten that?  Because I haven’t.” 

“Bodhi! –“ Her eyes are wide with horror.  He’s never spoken to her like this in seven years of marriage.  She looks for a moment as though she might choke on her own breath.

Her gaze holds his for a second and then passes beyond him.  Her face goes entirely expressionless suddenly, as though she’s trying to shut every thought and feeling far, far away.

It’s only then that he hears the sound of a footstep at the door; just one, coming inside.  Then a long moment of silence; and “Letters?” says Cassian’s stunned voice.

And the silence returns.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth finally comes out.

She can see that the front door is still open, behind Cassian, and the moonlight falls into the cabin, its cold light warring with the glow of the oil lamps so that he is half-warmth, half-shadow.  She can see that his lips are parted, his eyes dark in a wide-empty face.  No more words after that single one. 

He sounded so shocked, right to the heart, by it.   As if he’d never thought to hear that word spoken. 

Bodhi turns, facing Cassian full on.  I knew this had to come, Jyn thinks in grief; and would like to be able to feel bitterness, because for a moment he looks as though he might even be glad. 

“Yes, Cassian,” he says coldly. “Her _letters_.  The letters you _never answered_.  For God’s sake, did you honestly think we just  wouldn’t ever discuss it?”

Cassian ignores him.  He’s still staring at Jyn; mouth open, face masked in pain.  His throat convulses as he swallows.  “Jyn, you - you got my letters? – you wrote back to me?  Oh Jyn.  I never – I never got any of them, your replies, I swear to you, I never got them –“

What?

“No,” she says, sharp and desperate.  “My letters, _mine_ , not replies – you never –“ _oh God, no, this can’t be happening_ – “Cassian, you never wrote me –“

“I wrote to you.  Always, for years.  Even when I began to know you were never gonna answer me.  Jyn.  _Jyn_ …”

She’d been holding the second spill in her hand, and as she gapes at him, once again there’s a flame reaching her fingertips, once again something beginning to hurt her when she thought nothing could do more.  Her fingers open, nerveless in the face of pain; God help her, she hasn’t even the self-possession to extinguish a lit flame.  The spill drops to the floor and Bodhi with a curse darts back a pace to tread it out.

It doesn’t matter.  Let it burn her.  Let it burn them all.  “You never wrote to me,” she repeats.  Because if he did – if he did, then – “I never had a single letter from you, Cassian.”

“But _I wrote_.  You never replied.”

“She wrote,” Bodhi tells him.  “I was there with her, I saw it, I saw the letters.”

Jyn has never been a swooner, but oh, to collapse in a fit, fall down screaming; anything, to blot out this moment.  _Oh Lord, make this stop, make it stop_ …  Her lips move numbly and she hears a shred of her own voice say “I don’t understand” although God have mercy, she does, she understands perfectly, now.  Now when it’s seven years too late - “I don’t understand, Papa took the mail every day, he promised _faithfully_ –“

Everything feels black.  So much darkness, for all the lamps are lit now she is surrounded by the dark.

_I’m sorry, Stardust.  No mail for you today._

_Oh, Papa, there must be something!  Please check again!_

_I’m sorry.  My darling, truly I am…_

She’s shaking as if with cold.  Her mind would like to empty itself, wipe all this out and go blank, but all her body will do for her is shiver and feel sick; weak, stupid, like some frail little woman in a book, like one of those Gentle Ladies at King Arthur’s court in Galen favourite stories… 

She can’t just stand here and shake.  She pushes past Bodhi and drags out one of the chairs; sits heavily, staring at her hands.  Oh God, to be able to faint…

Her father never gave her Cassian’s letters.  He never mailed a single one of hers.  All through that hellish two months when she was trying to get word to Cassian, to beg him to come home so she could tell him what had happened, so their child would not be born a bastard.  All that time, her father -

_Everything I do, I do to protect you.  Jyn, my Stardust.  Say you understand._

**_I do not understand, Papa.  I do not understand!_ **

Bodhi says “I don’t understand.”  Like an ugly echo of her own thoughts.  He still sounds angry.  She’s been hiding for so long from how frustrated he must be by this stupid, blind-eyed situation.  The three of them pretending there was still nothing but friendship here and never had been. 

_We’re all hurting one another now. This was bound to happen but Oh God to undo it!_

“I swear to you, I swear,” says Cassian’s husky miserable voice.  It’s as if he thinks hitting the same dead thing over and again will kill it better than before. “I wrote so many times.  So many letters.  I wrote to her, Bodhi.”

 _God have mercy.  Be quiet, the pair of you, before I scream._   “Hush,” she whispers. “Hush.  I can’t –“

She can’t.

Next to her the door of the box room creaks open.  Jyn looks up into her son’s eyes.  He stares wide-eyed.  “Mama?  Why are you crying?”

“I’m alright, baby.”

“You’re crying,” Galen insists. “Is it because we didn’t save enough of Miss Tynnra and Miss Tarry’s things?  Are the bad men going to burn our house next?  Mama –“

Jyn tries to get up, to sweep him into her arms and hold him.  Her precious boy.  But it hurts to move; her whole body has gone rigid with tension.  She’s still levering herself out of the old bentwood chair when Bodhi passes her in a few swift strides.  He picks Galen up and holds him close as he wriggles wilfully.  Presses a kiss to his tangled hair.  “The bad men aren’t going to hurt you, son, I promise.  I’m here, Mama’s here.  You’re safe with us.  Look, here’s  Cassian too.  We’re all here to protect you.” Another firm kiss.  His eyes meet hers over the child’s head as Galen subsides in his arms.  “Mama and I will always take care of you and keep you safe.  I swear it.”

Her son’s bright eyes are fixed on her, full of love and worry.  “Galen, sweetheart,” she says from the emptiness inside “you should be in bed.”

“Mama come tuck me in?” 

“Papa will tuck you in.  And read to you and sit by you, honey.  It’s been a bad day, we’re all tired.”  She meets Bodhi’s gaze, hopes her pleading look will win him round; sees with huge relief his infinitesimal nod of assent.  He carries Galen back into his bedroom.  As the door closes behind them her son is saying “But why was Mama crying?” and Bodhi answers “We had some bad news, son, and it made her sad.”

“But _why_ –“

The door closes with a click and cuts off his voice.

Jyn sits in the lamp-lit dark and realises it’s true, she is crying, her face is wet with tears and there are wet streaks on her fitted black jacket and skirt, shining in the soft light.  Her mourning clothes, made for her father’s death.

There’s the sound of those dreadful footsteps again, slow, hesitating; the creak as the front door is shut.  For a second she thinks Cassian has walked out and left her to weep.  Oh, the bitter irony.  He would have that right.  But then his boots tread slowly to her side instead; there’s a breath of silent time, and he kneels at her feet.  She forces herself to look up at him. 

He is crying, too. 

“Jyn – what happened?”

She feels all the strength go out of her spine, all the air out of her mind.  Doubles up, sobbing and trying to stifle her sobs.  “Papa – it was Papa –“

“Oh Jyn, no…”

“I swear to you,” she whispers “I swear to you, Cassian, I wrote, I wrote to both the addresses you’d left, your grandparents, your uncle, I begged you to come home.  We never needed to say much to understand one another so I hoped you’d guess, that you’d see how desperate I was and just _realise_.  God forgive me, I didn’t have the courage to tell you outright.  I was afraid Papa might see one of my letters.  But I never dreamed that he would do _this_ –“

Her voice is a choked mess of sound, gabbling and muffled, vanishing in the hoarse dark.  She makes herself straighten up, clear her throat, try again. “I never wanted this, for you not to know, not to have the chance to be a father –“

What little she can see is blurred with tears; Cassian, in front of her, a wretched, shocked face, an upraised hand faintly outlined with light, that reaches towards her.  When he touches her wrist, his fingers are trembling.  She watches his throat work, a deep breath, then a gulp and he exhales shakily, and draws another long breath.  His lips part and close again.  At last, very softly he says “Then – Galen? –“

“Yes…” It’s hard even to whisper the word.  The truth.

“ _O Christ!”_ It’s not a curse but a plea, wrenched out of him in a voice of the most raw pain. “Jyn, oh God, my God!  I am so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”  He’s just a shape again now, lost in her tears, but she can tell he’s swaying back and forth, a man racked with prayer, hoping for the impossible, for the Almighty to somehow lift this burden before it kills. “Oh, Jyn.  You must have thought me a brute.  You must have thought I betrayed you and never even looked back.” His voice is still so quiet; trying not to be heard in the next room, of course, even as she is.  “I would have come!” he says in a gasp. “If I’d had any idea, I would have come, I swear I would have come back to you!”

Jyn raises a weak hand and smears at her eyes, blots away enough moisture to see him clearly again.  On his knees, shaking, just barely touching her with one unsteady hand while the other hangs in mid-air, forever reaching for her and hesitating away.  She grips the chair and pushes, trying again to get up, and cannot.  Sinks to the floor, her own hands fumbling for the front of his coat, his shoulders, clinging, as if touch can still be some consolation.  As if she can find herself in his strength.  If he can still bear to be strong for her, after so much.  “Cassian, Cassian, I’m so sorry!  I didn’t know!  I didn’t know Papa would do such a thing!”

Her own father.  He was so angry when she married Bodhi; so cynical, when Galen was born just six months later and named for him, this baby boy so sallow-skinned and brown-eyed, so clearly begotten before her wedding day.  _You’re the one who had to have your will, you’re the one who had to marry that half-breed…_

Did he know just how much he’d brought to be, with his meddling, with his endless complaining and trying to halter her?  He’d been happy enough to teach Cassian and Bodhi, and others darker even than them, to have them in his classroom alongside every white child in the town.  Happy to have people know his liberal values were stronger than the world’s bigotry.  But a man may be glad to have those less fortunate than himself look up to him, glad to see the brown boys listen to his teaching, without wishing them to aspire to his Stardust, his star-bright, lily-white daughter…

So long it took her, to accept his hard heart, to forgive him regardless that he’d never do the same for them; and now after all that, to learn this.  She wonders if she can ever forgive again.

“I knew he never approved of us being friends,” Cassian whispers. “Even though he didn’t know – everything.  He encouraged me to go to Mexico.  He said it was the right thing for me to do, that I was old enough to know I should stop wasting your time, stop encouraging you.”  He holds her tightly, at last, his arms like a shield, fists bunching in the cloth of her mourning dress.  She can feel his warmth on her skin, body heat and hot breath, and hot tears falling as he bows his head into the crook of her neck. “Oh Jyn, please forgive me.  I let him persuade me.  I listened, I thought I was doing something honourable.  I should never have left!”

So he had seen how close they’d become, and angled to separate them.  Not knowing it was already too late.

It was always too late, after that trembling cold Valentine’s Day.  The pretty printed card, the picture of roses in winter when no roses would ever be, and the poetry with its jingling rhymes; his card to her, discarded beside them in the hayloft.  His coat spread out for them to lie upon, her heart wide open like their hopes; their hands touching one another, exploring, trembling like tonight; chilly at first and then hot with excitement.  The day they got a child, between them, conceived in so much love, and such innocence.

So long ago, now, and so long past any hope.  No undoing the choices and the heartbreak that followed.  There’s only the child to save now; no salvation for her or for him, ever again...

She cries and cries, and Cassian cries, holding her.  And one by one around them, the lamps burn low, and gutter, beginning to go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, I'm afraid Galen Sr does not come out of this story well. Even trying to think of his actions in a 19th century context, i.e. with this kind of paternalistic bigotry being normal, it's pretty hard to forgive him. Apologies to any Galen fans, anyway. In canon, I think this behaviour would be fairly out of character for him, but then in canon he lives long enough to make enormous sacrifices and he does everything he can to put right his mistakes. In this AU though, it made a horrible kind of sense to me that a "loving papa" might do these things.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian tries to get used to the idea that he is a father, and realises what this means he must do...

So he has a son.  That beautiful, beautiful boy, with the dark hair and the bright eyes. 

Jyn is shaking and sobbing on his breast, clinging to him; his own arms are locked tight around her, and he too is sobbing, he too is shaking.  He has a child.  He has a son. 

_Galen is my son._

There are more shadows than light around them.  One of the lamps has gone out and the room is almost dark again.  But inside him there’s a new light, that was never there before.

Jyn is sobbing steadily, seven years of regret ,weeping in his arms, on his breast.  Her body close against him, head tucked against his neck.

How strange it is to remember the last time he held her in his arms.  Held her trembling.   _God forgive me, what have I done?_

She feels so warm, and so small. 

“Jyn… Jyn, dear one, please don’t cry.” What can he say?  There’s nothing that will ever heal this wound.  How terribly he’s wronged her, when he had only love to offer.  His love and his ignorance.  “My dearest.  Oh Jyn…”  There’s only one thing he has the right words for; and it is surely right for him to say. “Oh, Jyn, he’s such a wonderful boy.  You must be so proud of him.”

“I am,” Jyn whispers. “We are.  You should be too.  It’s been breaking my heart seeing you together.  You’re so alike.  I love him so much, Cassian.”

“And so do I…” Because as God is his witness, he does.  

Jyn raises her head very slowly to look up at him.  Immeasurable grief in her face, the weak light deepening the shadows, making hollows of her eye sockets, etching the lines round her mouth.  Those lips that were once so tender on his.  So bold to kiss, and so gentle, so unashamed, once. 

_How I have betrayed you…_

“I am so sorry,” he says again.

Her voice is very small. “Can you forgive me?  For not telling you?”

He gasps and stares.  Astonishing words.  Inconceivable, wrong, that she should see a need to ask his pardon.  His heart hollows itself like a gouged wound, beats on in its own raw blood.  “Jyn, it is I who should ask your forgiveness.”

“But there’s nothing to forgive.  You would have come.  I believe you.  You would have come but you didn’t know.”

He feels her shiver as she draws another breath.  Beats down the longing to bend his head, press his mouth to hers.  That can never happen now.  There’s no word under heaven can open his heart. 

“I love you,” he tells her helplessly. 

“I know.”

She nestles against him again, her breath on his throat.  Her arms are very warm.  Just for a moment it’s almost like holding that confiding happy girl of seven years gone.

“What did you write to me about?” she asks in a murmur.

“Ahh, so many things…  Foolishness, most of it.” But he wants to tell her more, to confide, in that memory of her loving him and holding him dear.  “I wrote about the journey and the different trees and animals I’d seen, the mountains, the places I travelled through.  The rivers, the people.  How my father’s family welcomed me; how much I –“ his voice jolts and tears, he fights to keep speaking –“how much I wanted you to meet them one day.  But then – when I became a soldier - There were some times I was strong enough not to let my fear show.  And sometimes I - wasn’t.  Jyn – some of my letters – There are things I wrote, that - I am almost glad, now, that you never had some of my letters.  And then I – I had to stop.”

“Oh, my dear…”

She strokes his back with one hand.  He brushes a lock of her hair back from her forehead.  They’re rocking slightly, tumbled together on their knees on the boarded floor, embracing.  He can almost imagine for a moment that this is what it would be like to be hers, sharing sorrow and love as husband and wife.  As they might have been. 

He beats down that thought too, like all the rest.  Never, never, never.

“All that is past,” he says.  _Never, never_ …  For her at least, for Galen and Bodhi, it’s no more than the plain truth.  All of those hopes of his are past, and everything they might have led to.  There is only now to attend to. “You did the right thing, Jyn.”

Her shaking voice goes wild and high suddenly as she says “I trusted Papa!” The last word is bitten out, as though the thought of her father burns.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he says again.  The useless salve of words.

Jyn pulls away and he hides his reluctance and releases her; helps her to her feet, and back to the chair.  She’s unfastening her black mourning jacket, fumbling at the jet buttons in a kind of furious urgency, and she shucks it and throws it onto the table.  “I _trusted_ him,” she repeats in a hiss.  “I _believed him_.”

She’s wiping at her cheeks, using the cuffs of her striped blouse, methodical, first one and then the other.  She doesn’t look up.  Behind her, the door to Galen’s little room creaks open and Bodhi’s face appears; his expression uncertain, then relieved, as he registers Jyn sitting at the table, Cassian standing beside her.

_He thought he’d find us in one another’s arms…_

Jyn has looked round too; she meets her husband’s eyes, bites her lip; asks in a low voice “Galen? – is he?—“

“He’s asleep.  He fell asleep almost immediately.  He’s worn out.  Jyn – Jyn, I’m so sorry.”

“It was bound to happen, sooner or later.”  She sounds utterly weary.  He wants to hold her again, and let her rest.  Let her sleep, like their son.

“Please tell me you can forgive me,” Bodhi asks humbly.  He lays a hand on her shoulder and after a moment she reaches up and touches it.

“Of course I forgive you.”

Cassian draws back, trying to move away without disturbing them as they look at one another.  It’s not his place to offer consolation here, not his place, not his place.  “I’ll – be outside” he whispers.  His voice is so hoarse he can barely hear it himself.  Neither one of them tries to prevent him from leaving, though he thinks he sees Jyn look his way just as the cabin door is closing.

He has a son.

It feels colder, outside, in the white silence under the moon.  There are heavy bluffs of cloud passing overhead, very slow, and the light comes and goes with their passing.  _I have a son._

Each time the moon comes out from behind a cloud, he can see the line of the hills, half-silhouetted and half-silvered, huge on the horizon, and close-by, little glimmers when the light catches the new wire of Bodhi’s fences.

_This is why I’ve lived as I lived; this is what it was all leading to, why I had to become the monster I am.  Though I didn’t know it, everything I did, I did for this; so that now at last I would be a man able to do what must be done.  A man able to save the people I love.  Because I am a murderer, and Bodhi is not and never will be._

_Bodhi is my son’s father.  Galen needs his father.  Jyn needs her husband._

_There’s only one thing they need from me.  My gun._

_I am the only man in this valley who knows what Fett is; the only man who’s worked with him, hunted with him, killed with him.  I know his speed, I know just how dangerous he is; but I know his weaknesses too, his tricks, his tics.  I am the only one with a hope of taking him out._

_I couldn’t live with myself if I gave up now._

The words sing round his head like a charm of hornets.   _I have a son,_ _I left Jyn with child, I left her, I left her_ …  His breathing is loud and uneven, still ragged in the aftermath of weeping.

In the silence after another rough breath he hears it; a faint rhythm.  Hard and unmistakable, the sound of hooves.  Nearby, not racing but steady in their pace, and coming nearer.

Cassian draws himself up, steeling his breath to quiet, flexing his right hand slowly above the Colt at his hip.  Deliberately and with care he makes himself relax, become still, and silent.  He scans the horizon and the pale open land. 

 _I am_ _a man who can do what must be done._

Cassian blots his face carefully dry.  Unsnaps the button of his holster, and rests his hand on the gun.  Whatever happens next, he will face it and be ready.

Moonlight glints off a white horse, a tall figure riding, a pale man with a pinched face and thick sideburns.  At the gate to the property the horseman dismounts and walks his animal through into the yard.  He halts, looking around doubtfully; he’s just a short way off, on almost the very spot where Cassian himself stopped, the day he arrived.  When Bodhi was at work sharpening his ploughshare, and Jyn was singing in the house.

There’s not a sound from within now, and only the dimmest of lights.  The man takes one step; and Cassian steps forward too, out of the shadows, to face him.


	19. Chapter 19

His hand is steady on the butt of the Colt. “Surely,” he says “you must know you’re not wanted here.”

“I guess I can’t blame you for thinking that,” says Kallus.  He looks ill-at-ease. “I guess if I were you, I’d agree.  But I hope you’ll hear me out.  I’ve come to see Rook.” He reaches up and pulls off his hat.  The moonlight falls on his sandy hair, and it’s no longer slicked-back but disordered and unkempt.  “Please let me by.  It’s important.  Let me speak to him, Andor.”

“No-one here wants to speak with you.”

“It’s important,” the other insists stubbornly. 

There’s something strange in his white face, in this light.  Something almost like honesty.

It would be so easy to let the anger well up inside, to let it tear him apart.  Cassian says “Another string of lies from that piece of shit you work for?” and hears his own voice spit with loathing.

“No.  It’s not a message from Krennic.  I’m – I’m finished with him, Andor.  I’m leaving.”

For a moment it takes all Cassian’s focus not to gawp at the man.  It can’t be true, surely it has to be a tactic…  He stiffens in anticipation of attack.  But none comes.

“I’ve seen enough,” Kallus says quietly. “I know I’ve no right to ask it of you, but – if I tell you what I need to say to Rook, please will you pass it on?”

Please; it’s the second time he’s said it.  This is something new.  Slowly Cassian nods.  “Okay.”

“There’s gonna be – a message, a deputation, from Krennic.  Tonight.  They’ll be here before midnight.  They’re gonna tell him Empire’s willing to talk.  That they’ve realised this community isn’t gonna crack.  They’re gonna ask Rook to come into town, talk things over.  Offer him the peace he’s been working for.  It’s a trap.  You gotta tell him before they get here.  Krennic knows he’s the keystone, he’s the one keeping everybody together.  The rest will crumble if he can just get to Rook.  They’re trying to get him alone so that man Fett can finish him like he did the old cripple.  You gotta tell him not to go.  Will you do it?”

“I’ll do that,” Cassian says after a moment.

His vision has become used to the shifting silvery light and he can see Kallus’ face more clearly now.  Nothing in the man’s demeanour or his voice suggests deceit.  It’s almost as if turning on Empire is a relief to him, or a freeing.  There’s a visible brightening of tension around his eyes. 

How can this make sense?  The man was Krennic’s dog, snarling to orders not a week past.

“You know that I must ask you.  Why are you doing this?”

Kallus looks down at the hat in his right hand.  He seems to be struggling to find any words.  “Yeah, I get that.  Why should you believe me? - after all you’ve seen nothing but shit from me.  And I been trying to put it in words for myself, ever since I set out to ride this way.” He scuffs the grass with the toe of one boot. “Look, you see, it’s like this.” He wets his lips and goes on, slowly and carefully. “I joined up with Empire because I believe in what they told me they’d do.  Tame a wild country, make it a place where people could build homes, bring up families.  I believe in that; order, safety, the law.  And it was a wild country, out here, back in them days.  And I’ve seen things, done things, no Christian man should do, for the sake of taming it.  Things I gotta see in my mind till I die, things know I can’t undo.  But I did my duty.”

He raises his head and takes a deep breath; looks Cassian squarely in the eye.  “Same as I fought for the Union in the war.  Same reasons.  For a country with laws, a place that would be safe for everyone, one day.  Now see, the old guy, the cripple, I won’t say I liked the man but he fought too, same as me.  Now, happen you don’t like a man, in a country that’s free and has the rule of law you can dislike him all you want.  But you can’t just up and kill him without cause, and ask people not even to see.” Kallus turns the hat in his hands, bites his lip again. “I don’t claim to be a good man, Andor.  I’ve sinned too many times and too many ways to count, and I reckon I’ll be judged for it one day.  But I know when I can’t stomach any more turning away and pretending there’s nothing to see.  What Krennic’s doing, calling in that man Fett who is nothing but a killing machine, it ain’t – it ain’t legal and it ain’t right.  I didn’t join Empire to be part of an outfit that kills old men and burns helpless girls out of their home.”

The clouds are thinning and the light comes clear again, overhead.  Kallus is almost smiling, his sour face rueful. “Jesus Christ, listen to me, making speeches.  Like I was in some storybook.  Well, hell.  So, anyway, maybe I’m a damn’ fool.  But the minute I decided I was gonna leave, I felt like I’d cleared a lie off my mind.  So this is it.  I’m off.”

His careful, uncertain voice is silent, and it seems for a moment as though there’s no other sound in the whole valley but the two of them breathing. 

All too soon there will be other hooves approaching, and other men coming with their news, and their lies.  News that Bodhi and Jyn would have believed, news they would have clung to as a branch of hope in the storm, without this warning.

Cassian holds out his right hand.  “Thank you.  You’ve done a good thing today, Kallus.”

A firm grip, a handshake that grows more certain; and “Alexander,” the man says. “My name’s Alexander.”

“Cassian.”

“Well, hell.  Good luck, then, huh?”

“You too.”

“And you’ll pass on my message to Rook?  He’s been pretty damn brave and I’m betting he’s gonna want to do this, but you gotta stop him.  That little boy needs his papa.”

“Yeah…” Cassian steps back, lets go.  Says “I’ll make sure he doesn’t go to town.”

“Good.”

Kallus combs his hair back roughly with his hand and puts on his hat again.  He mounts quickly, turns the horse about.  Touches his hat-brim to Cassian in farewell.

Takes the uphill trail, heading out of the valley.

Cassian stands watching until the tall white horse is out of sight.  Then turns and goes around to the back of the cabin, into the barn.

He’d unhitched the wagon team when he left the cabin earlier, figuring to occupy his hands and mind, drive out the image of Jyn’s smile by lamplight.  But a cloud had come over the moon and it was too dark to finish; he’d gone back indoors for a light and walked into a revelation beyond anything he’d dreamed of. 

And now this.  How the world changes, between one heartbeat and the next.

His own horse is standing in the shadows, waiting for him to return; still saddled and in harness.  He strokes the animal’s soft nose, clucking to it soothingly; leans for a second against the muscular neck, and breathes the familiar smell.  It’s been a long time, a long road, with just the two of them riding it.  It would have been good for them both to have a home at last.  But no use in grieving.  There’s no other way open for him now save to go forward.  He climbs up into the hayloft and gathers his things quickly.

By the time he’s packed his saddlebags, stowed his bedroll and checked and reloaded the Colt, there’s a faint sound of hoof-beats in the distance.  Galloping, coming closer, two horses being ridden fast.  Cassian leads his own mount quietly out of the barn, into the shadows at the side of the house.  He can see the horsemen approaching; it’s a bare few minutes before they’re shouldering through the half-open gate and riding up to the front of the cabin. 

Hidden in the shadows he waits and listens. 

Neither man dismounts; instead, they both pull their horses up and keep them fidgeting, on a short rein, in the yard in front of the house.  The older of the two calls out “Rook, hey Rook!  You there?” in a loud, artificially-friendly voice.

There’s a pause, and then the sound of the door opening, and Jyn’s voice says, quiet and cold “What do you want?”

“Whoa, Missus Rook, no call to threaten us with your broom!  We don’t need to be swept up, Missus!”

“Keep your voice down, my boy is sleeping.”

“Hey, sorry, okay?  Say, Missus, your husband there?  We got a message for him.”

Cassian’s fists are clenched so tight they hurt.  He forces himself to breathe slowly, stand steady.  So Kallus was right. 

He relaxes his fingers one by one.  _You know what you have to do.  Let it go, and be ready.  This is why you are here._

_This is the reason you came._


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dangerouslee rough terrain continues in this chapter, I'm afraid.

Jyn hears Bodhi come to the door behind her, and the click as he releases the safety on his hunting rifle.  At close quarters like these, she hopes it might be a threat at least; perhaps even enough to give them pause.  Surely a face full of buckshot would hurt a man pretty bad, even if it wouldn’t take him clean off like a bullet from a six-shooter.

“What do you want?” Bodhi says quietly.

“Hey, Rook, good evenin’ to you too, huh?  No call to be so alarmed-looking, we just came by on our way home to bring you a message from the boss.”

“What message would that be, then?” How does he sound so calm?  Her own breath is still shaking as though she’s been running. 

Jyn grips the broom harder.  This has been a day of the devil’s own making; having Krennic’s thugs at her door long after nightfall is just one more jolt in a long day of insult and misery.  If these brutes are here to attack her family, tonight of all nights, she’ll go down fighting.  She’ll fight till every bone in her body is broken and every drop of her blood is pouring out.

They’ve both kept their hats on, the visitors, for all their false good manners, and it’s hard to see their faces in the hard shadows and dead-flat moonlight.  But she thinks the two in front of her are the older man who sometimes came with Kallus, and the spotty boy.

“You oughta be pleased about this,” says the second rider; and yes, it is the boy, she recognises that cracked adolescent voice.  “Boss Krennic’s had word from the Chief, in Coreville.  Mister Tarkin thinks this little town’s costing a deal too much time and effort to win.  He sent word to let it go.”

Let it go?  That can’t be – it’s too good to be true, surely –

Bodhi’s voice, behind her, suddenly sounds wide and hopeful.  “Let it go?  You mean you’re gonna back off?”

_Oh, my heart, can’t you see that this must be a trap?_

“Well, I don’t rightly know what the boss is planning, but he asked us to say he’d like to meet with you.” The older man again, sounding good-humoured, even amused.  “He’ll be at Merrick’s saloon till midnight or so, and if you don’t come tonight, he’ll be there again tomorrow.  He wants to talk peace with you, Rook.  Thought you’d be glad to hear it.”

“I am,” says Bodhi, stunned and audibly smiling. “I am, we are.  You tell your boss from me –“

“Aww, no, we’re off home now.  You can tell him yourself when you ride over.  Tonight or tomorrow, that was the message.  He’ll wait up past midnight, and he’ll be there again tomorrow.  He wants to get this sorted out once for all.”

“I see…  Well, thank you, I guess.  This sure is good news.”

They touch their hats, turn their horses.  Harness chinking, hooves heavy in the silence.  “Good night, then, Rook, Missus Rook.”

“Good night,” Bodhi says.

She cannot for the life of her echo him.  Her heart is pounding so hard it feels like she’s going to drop dead from the thunder. 

The two men ride away, heading off in a wide loop to bypass the road back to town and make their way straight to First Star Ranch.

Jyn back away into the house and closes the door.  Turns to face her husband in the light of the remaining lamps. “You surely don’t take this seriously.”

He’s smiling; his face is almost alight with hope.  He says stuttering with excitement “Are you k-kidding?  Of course I – of course I take it seriously!  If this is for real then –“

“If!  _If,_ Bodhi!  And if it is not?”

“What does Krennic gain by pretending he wants to talk peace?  A loss of face and a waste of time.  That’s not his way.” 

“He gets you alone, right where he wants you!  Bodhi, please don’t go.  Men like Krennic don’t have a sudden moral turn-around.  Surely you can see it’s a trap?”

“You heard them; he’s had instructions from Tarkin to sort things out here.  Nothing moral about it, it’s just costing too much.”

“Please don’t go,” she says again, voice weakening with shock as she sees him gather up his coat and tug it on.  “Please.  At least wait till morning, wait till you can talk to the others.  Hiram, Raymus, the sisters.  Wait till morning and take someone else with you.  Is that so much to ask?  Bodhi, please.  Won’t you do this for me?”

“Jyn, this is what I’ve been trying to achieve from the first.  Krennic is finally willing to talk and I’d be a fool to throw away this opportunity.”  He’s pulling his boots on. 

“Please!  Bodhi, _please_!  What if it’s a trap?”

Bodhi’s face is purposeful, determined.  He swings the rifle over his shoulder.  Turns to go.  He’s at the door.  She cries “Please!” again and he hesitates for a moment and then comes partway back to her, hands upraised in something that is almost a shrug.  “Jyn.  Honey.  Maybe it is a trap.  That’s why I’m taking my gun.  But if it is…  Sweetheart, we both know, if I don’t come back, you’d be looked-after.”

It’s a moment before she realises what he means.  All the air seems to rush out of her in one wintry blast, leaving her shaking.  She grabs onto the nearest chair to stay upright. “No.  No, you can’t mean that!”

“Jyn, sweetheart, I couldn’t risk leaving you and Galen, but I’d have to be blind not to see it now.  You’ll have someone to protect you who –“

“Bodhi, no!  Please, no, please don’t say these things –“

“He’ll love you both and fight for you just as hard as I ever could –“ He’s smiling bitterly.

“Please stop, think what you’re saying, please don’t go, _please_!”

“And I’ll have done right by you, as a husband should.  Look, if this is a trap, Jynnie, you can be sure I’ll do my best to get Krennic before his boys get me.  I can shoot okay, you’ve seen me hunt, I’m a fair shot.”

Jyn’s voice fails her, she can barely breathe, she sinks into the chair, staring at him.  He’s serious, he’s actually thinking he can take on Krennic and Fett and however many of the Boys are still there.  With his rifle.  He’s going to sacrifice himself for her and Galen, and leave them to Cassian, like a bequest.

Making her choices for her, just like her father.  She shakes her head numbly.  How do men understand love, if this is what they do for it?

Bodhi smiles at her denial. “If his offer is for real, and we’ve got a chance to end this mess finally, I owe it to every farmer in the valley to try.  I owe it to Galen, hell, I owe it to Saw’s goddamn ghost and you know it.” He’s on fire, righteous with hope and anger. “I promised I’d take care of you, Jyn, and I mean to do it.  Don’t try to stop me.”

But she has to.  This is her home, her life.  She has as much of a stake in this family as Bodhi.  She pulls herself to her feet again as he opens the door.  “ ** _No_** _!_ ”

She gets no further.  There’s a figure in the doorway, and he spreads his arms and blocks Bodhi’s path. “No,” says Cassian’s calm voice, echoing her. “They’ll kill you if you go.”

“Yeah?  How come you’re so sure of that?” Bodhi glares at him. “I do know how to use this rifle, you know.  Let me by, Cassian, I have to do this.  You know I do.”

“No, I don’t know that at all.”

“You don’t believe I’m good enough to face Krennic and his hired thugs?  I’ve been facing them and arguing with them for months, long before you ever showed your face here!  I’ll be facing them again long after you’ve gone!”

Behind Cassian, the sky is clear, moonlight picking out the far hills.  His horse stands waiting in the yard, saddled and bridled. 

Oh God.  He’s leaving.  Leaving her – leaving them – again.

“Not if I can help it,” he’s saying. “I’m going to sort this thing out once for all.”

“That’s _my_ job.” Bodhi’s voice is dangerously quiet. 

Cassian shakes his head. “No, it’s mine.  It has to be.  This is what I do.”

 _What in God’s name? – no, he can’t mean what that -_ “Stop this, both of you,” Jyn says.  She doesn’t sound as strong as she would like to, because _no no **no**_ \- “This is insane.”

Cassian is wearing the Colt on his hip.  He’s put on his old buckskin coat, his worn brown pants.  His face is grave almost to the point of expressionless as he says “It is a trap, Jyn is right.  Kallus told me, and I believe him.  It’s madness for you to go.  Bodhi, I know Billy Fett, I’ve seen what he can do.  You haven’t.  You don’t have a chance against him.  He’s fast.  But so am I and I know his weaknesses.”

“You _know_ him?  Yeah, you do, don’t you?  Not just by reputation.  Dammit, Cassian, what the hell aren’t you telling us?”

“Yes, I know him,” Cassian says.  His voice begins to rise. “I was a bounty hunter, for two years, after the war in Mexico.  I rode with him along the Rio Colorado and the Yuma trail, I rode with him and his brother!  And that is why I can do this.  I can stop Fett, and you can’t.”

A bounty hunter?  Which is as much as to say, a gunslinger.  Just as she’s feared from the start.  He’s a killer now, her first love, her gentle childhood friend...

“You rode with scum like that, you did a dirty job like that, and now you think you can just step in and take my job away from me?” She’s never heard Bodhi so furious.  Only minutes since he decided to bestow her on Cassian by his sacrifice; but it’s quite another thing, it seems, for his choice to be usurped in this way. “Dammit, it’s for me to look after this family, not you!”

Cassian stands barring the door with his body; and “I won’t let you do this,” he says with finality.

Bodhi stands glaring.  For a second she prays he’s going to see sense; this isn’t some brawl, and he’s still her husband, the rational one, the quiet leader, the peace-keeper.  The man who always says _We can talk this out, we can work together_.  Surely he isn’t going to lose his temper now, with a friend, after everything he’s stood and taken in the way of insult and abuse from other men?

Then he lowers the rifle off his shoulder.  Takes it in both hands like a club.  “Try to stop me.”

No.  No, surely not, they can’t be going to –

Bodhi swings out, an uncoordinated blow that misses Cassian’s midriff by a clear six inches; and Cassian lets it go past and then steps in close and grabs him by the forearms. “Don’t be a fool, Bodhi, you don’t want to fight me!  And I’m not here to fight you!”

“Then get out of my way!”

“I can’t do that.”

Cassian shakes him, pushes him back into the room, but he pulls free and lashes out.  The butt of the gun sweeps past Cassian’s head; he dodges again, and this time he grabs it and wrenches it from Bodhi’s grasp; throws it to the floor, kicks it aside. “I won’t let you go to Rogue,” he says. 

Bodhi puts his fists up.  Jumps forward and swings out.  Next moment they are lashing out at one another like a couple of prize-fighters, circling back into the room, jabbing and parrying with their fists.  Jyn scrambles out of their way, looking around wildly for something to beat them apart.  “Stop it, stop it!” She grabs up the broom and swings it into the melee, hears it crack cross Cassian’s shoulders and winces even as she’s pulling back for another blow.  That it should come to _this_ – dear God, what more can this day from hell bring upon her?  

She can’t do this; thrash her husband, her lover, like children?  She dodges out of the way as they tussle. “Stop it, for God’s sake, stop!” Her voice sounds high with rage and misery.

Bodhi crashes into her vacated chair and grabs it up, swings it back and cracks it down against Cassian’s side.  He stumbles back with a yelp of pain as the chair skids off him and hits the floor, hard enough to break the struts of the back. 

Jyn shrieks “Stop it!” again as the two men stagger apart.  For a moment she thinks they might be listening; they’re at a standstill, both panting and wincing.  Then Bodhi feints left and makes a dash for the door.  Cassian launches himself after, and with a cash they’re outside and down, rolling on the stoop, wrestling and punching, parrying one another’s fists and grunting with pain as the blows start to hit hard.  The horse shies away from their violence, neighing in alarm. 

She stumbles to the doorway, clutching her broom. 

Behind her there’s a soft creak and she turns in horror to see her son emerge from his room, barefoot and blinking.  They’ve woken him, with their shouting, their animal crashing about and throwing of furniture.  She cries out “Galen, no – no, stay inside, don’t –“ but it’s too late, he’s already run forward.  She just manages to grab hold of his shirt before he can dash straight out into the middle of the fight.  Far too late to stop him from seeing what’s going on.  He gives a shocked cry.  “Papa!  Papa, no!”

Cassian and Bodhi are rolling on the ground, grappling in the pool of spilled lamplight from the door, Cassian trying to keep a grip on Bodhi and stop him from pulling away while Bodhi jabs furious blows at his head and chest.  There’s blood on his lip and he looks desperate, but he’s on top.  Gasping for breath he swings back hard, trying for a knock-out punch. 

Cassian draws his gun, and smashes the barrel against the side of Bodhi’s skull. 

For a moment the world seems to stop dead.  Then Galen screams as his papa slumps to the ground.

Jyn tries to draw in breath, to cry out like her son.  Nothing comes.  The broomstick falls from her hands, and she’s suffocating, holding herself upright gripping the doorframe, her whole body shaking silently.  Her son thrusts past her and runs shrieking into the yard as Cassian heaves Bodhi off into the dust and staggers to his feet.

Galen hurls himself to the ground screaming “Papa!” and Jyn stumbles forward and falls to her knees beside her husband and child.  _Please, Lord, please, no -_  

“Bodhi?  Bodhi!”  He’s breathing; his eyelids flutter, eyes half-opening for a second, but glazed and stunned. “Oh honey, Bodhi, oh thank God…”  She puts her hand to the place where he was struck and it comes back bloody. “Cassian, why – what – dear God, what in Christ’s name were you _thinking_?  Bodhi, Bodhi, sweetheart, talk to me!”

Bodhi groans and his eyes slide shut again.

Beside her, Galen scrambles to his feet and draws himself up to his full, slight, height.  His little face blazes with rage as he shouts straight up into Cassian’s face “I hate you!  You hurt my papa!  I _hate_ you!”

Cassian is still catching his breath, and he flinches as though that one hit was harder than any of the punches Bodhi threw.  There are bruises coming up already on his face.

“I hate you!” cries Galen. “You hit him with your gun!  It wasn’t fair!”

“Hush,” she tells him. “Go inside, Galen.  Bring me something to bathe your papa’s face.” He doesn’t move; he’s shaking like a leaf, and she hasn’t the heart to repeat her order.  His world is falling apart, too.

“Jyn,” Cassian says quietly; and though she’s kneeling and holding her unconscious husband she cannot help herself, she looks up at him, and bleeds inside at the pain in his eyes, and the way he hides it. “Jyn, I’m sorry.  I have to do this.”

So this is who is he, now.  In spite of everything, in spite of all she’s done to fight her own feelings, still they could not make this work.  They weren’t strong enough, and all the love in the past couldn’t keep the present from ruin.  The culmination of all her fears and griefs in Cassian’s empty face.

She says his name, and her voice breaks on it. “Cassian, when you told us the things you knew about Fett – you were describing your own life, is that right?”

“Some of it, yes.” 

“So that’s what you are, now?” And with Bodhi bleeding in her lap she breaks a little.  Her voice turns cruel with pain. “A man who kills for money?”

“I hate you!” shouts Galen again, his voice choking.  There are tears running down his cheeks.  She reaches out and catches hold of his hand, pulling him in against her side.  He tumbles in a heap and buries his face in her skirt, sobbing.

“That’s what I am now, yes.” Cassian has holstered the Colt gain, and caught his horse; he stands holding the bridle, looking down at the three of them. “I have to do this thing, I have to protect you.  I’m sorry, Jyn.”

“You’re just like my father,” she tells him.  Her heart is in shards inside her; her son weeping, husband injured, lover riding away. “Choosing how to protect me without ever asking if I want you to do it in the first place.”

And perhaps she should not have said that.  Cassian flinches again, minutely, at her words.  _Oh God, my God, how have we come to this?_

Another long, long look, as if he would engrave the scene before him in memory forever.  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

He sets his boot in the stirrup and swings up into the saddle.

 _Please don’t leave me_ , cries her heart; and her voice says “Is this goodbye, then, Cassian?”

“This is goodbye.”

And without a word more, he rides out of the yard, off down the trail towards Rogue.


	21. Chapter 21

There seems to be nothing but fire and echoes inside Bodhi; a roaring like a tornado, a heat that throbs behind his eyes, but nothing solid, nothing concrete enough to set his mind to and say _This is I, Bodhi Rook, father, husband, farmer, this is me_.  Nothing but noise and then nausea, and the taste of dirt and blood.  He bats feebly at something touching his forehead; tries to say “What -” and hears a wordless groan.

Jyn says something; she’s above him, or maybe behind him, it’s hard to tell where the sound is coming from, or work out what the words are.  If there are words at all.  He’s sure it’s her, though there’s something in her tone that is hard and unfamiliar.

No.  Distantly familiar.  A jerking, angry sound that shakes as she gulps in breath.  The sound of crying, a violent unhappy noise.  Then it seems to break into two voices, one to each side of him; the effect makes him dizzy, trying to place how Jyn can be crying on his right and his left at once.  Or above him and behind him.  The world is spinning.

He’s made her cry. 

“Jyn…” he tries to say.  “Honey…” he tries to say. 

All his throat will do is rasp and groan.  Even that much hurts.  But at least he can understand words spoken, now, as Jyn strokes his forehead and says “Hush, dear, hush.”

The crying goes on beneath her words.  It really is two voices.  The other one must be –

Galen.  Galen is crying.  Galen hasn’t cried for years, his hopeful brave little boy. 

“Son…” he creaks. “Wha’ happen’ –“

“Hush,” Jyn says again, her voice vibrating as if with hiccoughs. “You’ve been unconscious, hush, lie still.”

“Papa…” whimpers Galen. 

“Head,” Bodhi manages to say. “Hurts.”

“Yes.  Yes.  My darling idiot love, yes.  What were you thinking of, Bodhi?  You had a fight with Cassian.  Oh my dear, why are men like this?”

“Wha’ happened?”

“He hit you in the head.”

Bodhi forces his eyes open and sees darkness, and then a faint glow like lamplight, somewhere nearby.  The bed is very hard, under him.  Hard and stony, and grassy.  Maybe it isn’t the bed after all.  There’s dust on his face and in his mouth.  Jyn’s cool hand strokes his brow, his cheek.

“Wha?” he says.  “Uhh… Where?”

“Hush, dear.”

“No,” says Bodhi.  “No.”

He shifts his arms, the world spins like a child’s top, Galen sniffles and cries “Papa” again; and Bodhi rolls onto his side and braces himself, and pushes up against the unreliable earth. 

The pain in him swings about and settles, and locates itself, with great precision, smack on the side of his skull.  Oh yes.  Cassian hit him.

His arms shake, but he locks his elbows and keeps himself from sinking down again.  Blinks, trying to clear his vision of the dust and the fuzziness.  Jyn is kneeling beside him, he recognises the narrow coloured stripes on her best shirt, and her pale hand raised towards his brow.  “Oh, honey, carefully there,” she says in a shaking voice.

“Papa?  Are you alright now?  Papa, does your head hurt?”

“Yes, son, it hurts.” But at least he’s making coherent full words now.  Stringing them together in sentences.  “Jyn.  Sweetheart, please – ’m sorry.”

In the back of his mind he can hear her saying bitterly _You’re just like my father_ , and although he’s not sure it was said to him, it should have been, because it’s true, and he’s a damn’ fool who deserves it.  _You’re just like my father, choosing how to protect me without ever asking if I want you to do it in the first place._  

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs again, raising one hand to his throbbing head. “Thought I was – doin’ the right thing.  I’m so sorry, Jyn.”

“Hush, it’s okay.  Oh, my dear, dear, idiot husband.  Oh I could weep for the two of you, why, _why_ must you turn on one another now of all times, after all your speeches about finding the peaceful way and then you go and start a fight with Cassian of all people…” Her voice is jolting up and down the scale as though she’s riding fast on bad terrain while trying to hold a conversation.  “Oh Bodhi, why’d you do it?”

“I’m sorry.” Damn it, how’s he ever going to live with himself now?  Letting his fool temper get the better of him finally. “Where’d he go?”

“He rode into town.  I told him goodbye –“ for a second her voice breaks completely, before she grabs at another breath and says simply –“and then he rode away.”

“Shit.” And shit indeed, because he’s just cussed in front of Galen and he can hear the little boy’s sharp intake of breath.  “Ah, no.  I didn’t want him to do that. ’s not his job.”

He drags his knees under himself and starts to get up.  Jyn moves closer, sets her shoulder under his to help him to his feet.

“It’s all of our job,” she says angrily. “But it’s too late now.  He’s gone off to die for us.”

“Shit,” Bodhi says again.  There really is no other word for it. 

“Mama?” Galen sounds more shocked than ever.  Bodhi blinks down at him and sees his face is tear-stained.  Next moment he’s wailing. “Mama, no!  No, Cassian can’t die!  Make him come back!”

He wants Cassian back.

It was a knowledge bitter as burnt coffee, knowing that Cassian had learned the truth at last; that Galen is a little bit less his, now.  It had driven him a little crazy.  But he should have remembered his wits, for all that.  Like Jyn.  She stayed, when she could have gone after Cassian; she’s stayed with him. 

What a fucking fool he’s been. 

“We should have gone together,” he says weakly.  How could he have done this?  Truly, everyone Jyn has ever depended on has let her down in the end. “I’ve driven off my best ally, haven’t I?  Oh, Jyn.  My head hurts.  We should have gone to face them together, all of us, shouldn’t we?  All the Rogues, together.  Oh God, my head…”

“It’s too late,” Jyn repeats dully.  

“I gotta get to the barn, get a horse.  I’ll go for Raymus and Wedge – no, Hiram and the boys, they’re nearer – we’ll go into town and stop this.”

“Cassian is ten minutes gone already, and you are in no condition to ride anywhere.” She supports him and he leans gratefully on her; together they stagger onto the stoop. 

Galen stands staring as Bodhi lowers himself painfully onto the bench, then wraps both arms round him and buries his tearful face in Bodhi’s shirt.  “Papa, papa, papa, I’m so sorry!”

“Galen, shh, it’s okay.  You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I told Cassian I hated him,” Galen chokes out the words. “But I don’t hate him, I don’t really.  Only he hit you and it wasn’t a fair fight.  But now Mama says he’s gonna die and I don’t want him to die!  Papa, papa, we have to save him!”

Jyn sits down beside him on the seat.  “I couldn’t stop him,” she says.  His vision is clearing more with every minute, and he can see how drawn and miserable her face is in the shadows. “He’s gone.”

“I don’t want Cassian to go!” cries Galen. “Mama, why can’t he come back?  Make him come back, Papa!”

“It isn’t _can’t_ , dear,” Jyn tells him “it’s _won’t_.  He decided he had to go, so he went.”

“But I want him to come back!”

“It’s too late.  I’m sorry, darling.”

A rush of nausea floods through Bodhi and he screws his face up to brace against it.  “Jyn.  It’s not too late.  Go after him.  Make him stop.”

“And leave you like this?  Are you mad?”

“I’ll be okay.  This is my fault, my mistake.  Please.  Help me put it right.  Take the roan, she’s fast.”

Jyn says “Why must it be me to fix the mess?  You, Cassian, Papa – you men will break my heart, Bodhi!” Her bitter voice rises and snaps on the last words. 

Beside her, Galen is still crying.

These are sounds he never, ever meant to cause.

He was trying to do his duty, to do right by the people he loves, the people who depend on him.  Not to hurt them both so much.  And there’s nothing he can say except “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Jyn.”  Nothing he can do, except atone for this, for the rest of his life if need be.  He preached peace at her, at every soul he knew, until his own temper was tried.  And he won’t even be punished for it, now that Cassian has gone to die for him.

“Mama, mama please,” says Galen, hiccoughing manfully as he tries to control his tears. “Please ask Cassian to come home.”

Jyn takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long, long sigh.  Sits looking at her son.  Another deep breath, and she says “Yes.  Yes, dear, I’ll try.  Look after your papa for me, will you?” And to Bodhi “You’re right, I should take the roan.  And I’ll need your rifle.”

It’s still on the floor inside; he nods a dizzy assent. 

She’s as good a shot as he is.  And unlike him, if she takes up a gun, she’s expecting to use it.

His head is throbbing like a fever but he feels stone-dead inside, dead and cold.  He watches as Jyn kneels and embraces Galen tightly for a moment before standing.  Her face is quiet now, almost empty of feeling.  Yes, she’s expecting to use the gun. 

His wife is going into a gunfight for him.

A spark of resistance brings him halfway to his feet but he staggers, and Jyn pushes him back onto the bench.  She bends and kisses him on the forehead, and hurries inside.

Bodhi leans back against the wall of the cabin and shuts his eyes as another wave of nausea comes over him.  Dimly through the sickness and the ocean sound of his own blood in his ears, through the dark of his self-disgust, he hears footsteps, and then hooves, and Jyn saying again “Look after your papa, Galen”.  And then there’s only the quickening, fading thunder as she rides off.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the darkness, too late.

When the world stops swaying, drowning him in shame, he’ll ride after them.  When the pain stops.  If it ever does.  He’ll ride after them both, and try to put things right.


	22. Chapter 22

When Cassian comes over the crest of the trail, above the burned-out wreck of the Pamlo place, there are no lights in the windows of the store, only in the saloon next door.  He counts six horses tied up in front, Krennic’s grey and Fett’s tall gelding among them.  No surprises there, then.

There’s a lamp-glow behind the shutters of the upper storey, above the bar-room; but as he rides down towards the buildings it is extinguished suddenly.  As though the occupants have packed up for the night.

Curious that the Merricks would do that, with customers still on the premises.

Curious that they would let Krennic and his men stay on at all, at this hour.  It doesn’t feel right.

He slows his horse to a walk, to deaden the sound of its hooves as much as possible.  Rides on down slowly alert for any movement, from the saloon itself or the dark store beside it.

Six horses outside implies six men inside.  If there are no others hiding, then - with a fully-loaded gun, if each shot can hit its target, he has a chance.  A chance he will take.  Go for Fett first and then Krennic; take out the fangs, cut off the head.  Then as many of the others as he can get.  He’ll take each chance, for as long as they hold out.

No back-up.

Well, he’s fought alone before.  If he gets through this night, there’s little doubt but one day he’ll have to again.  If he gets through this night it will be to spend the rest of his life running from the other Fett brother.  Boba is a man even more unrelenting than Billy, and colder in the heart.

He dismounts quietly at the edge of town and leads his horse up the street.

Maybe he has this all wrong, and Krennic is not waiting to kill anyone.  Maybe Kallus was talking nonsense.  He allows himself a half-smile at the thought.  It would be ironic, to ride back to the farm with an apology and a genuine message of peace.  Ridiculous; and ridiculously sweet.  He could live.  They could all live.

The light from the saloon bar falls in a bright oblique onto the road.  He’s here.

He loops his horse’s reins loosely round the rail, allowing it to stand and rest beside the other animals.  The neighbour horse turns its head and snorts, and the two touch noses briefly.  The harmless sweetness of the moment, the friendly creatures knowing nothing of their masters’ intent, stays with him as he steps onto the board walk.

He moves silently towards the saloon door.  He’s here, and this is it.  It’s no longer strange, that blind luck brought him to this day and this moment.  He’s been searching a long time to reach this place and this knowledge, to know himself here.  His mind has only one thing in it, simple and clear.   _I am here, I will do what must be done._

Whatever comes, he will be ready.  The readiness is all.

Inside, he can see there’s no-one behind the bar.  Just three men are visible.  Krennic, seated, toying with a drink, and Wilson Fett and another man leaning against the deserted bar.  The rest must be at the sides, out of sight from the entrance.  They were expecting Bodhi, who would never think to expect men lying in wait for him like that.  So it’s possible, even probable, that the others won’t be too well hidden.  Bodhi would have been all-too easy to outflank, in his hope and his courage.

Fett stands relaxed, not even looking at the doorway.  It’s just another day to him.  The other two exude a palpable tension.

Cassian pushes the swing doors open.  As he steps through his peripheral vision picks up two figures, one on either side.  Both sitting alone, weapons hidden by their respective tables.  He isn’t at close-enough quarters to be shot-at under the table with any accuracy.  They’ll need a second to stand, and a fraction more to draw their guns and aim.

So for those first crucial moments, he can disregard them. 

Five men in sight; the sixth must be in the store, a hidden back-up.  Or perhaps upstairs.  Have the Merricks betrayed Bodhi now, and let this be done; or are they up there too, helpless, held at gunpoint?

He takes in Krennic’s face as the man looks round; sour frustration, and a simple disgust at not getting what he wants.

And Fett’s, expectant, then coldly amused, taking in the figure before him.  _Yes, Billy, it’s me, surely you knew this would happen..._

The other three fidget; then look to Krennic and grow quiet again like dogs as he motions with one hand.  The room is utterly still. 

Cassian keeps his eyes on Krennic and Fett.

His right hand rests, relaxed, fingertips just touching the Colt.

The ache of his new bruises fades away, along with every fear and tension.  He’s calmer than he’s ever been, because this is the inevitable moment.  Fett, Krennic, the other three, the sixth man hidden; six bodies, six minds, six guns.  Stillness.

He nods to Fett, and then to Krennic.  The bounty hunter’s smile grows sharp edges and he nods back.  “Andor.”

“Fett,” Cassian acknowledges.

It’s the first time Fett has spoken.  The first time in more than two years that he’s heard that expressionless voice.

Krennic chews on his lip for a second before bumping down his glass irritably.  He stands, arms akimbo, glaring.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come on behalf of the Rook family, to hear your terms.”

“No, no, no, that’s no good.” His voice is almost childishly frustrated. “I need to talk to Rook in person.  I won’t deal with an intermediary.  Go on now –“ he waves one hand petulantly – “go back and tell him to come here himself.”

“I can’t do that,” Cassian says.  Waiting, watching, ready.

“I don’t have time for this.”  Krennic says.  His white coat has been washed, the blood stains from the fight a week ago faded but still visible.  He pushes the folds back now, to reveal the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster. “Go on, go.  I didn’t stay up half the night to speak to a messenger boy.”

“Then you’ll speak to no-one.” Nobody’s moving, but Fett has straightened up, going instantly from easy-limbed relaxation to a stark, poised line like a knife blade.  Cassian says “Bodhi isn’t coming.  He sent me.  So you talk to me.”

Fett says quietly “This isn’t your fight, Andor.  You can still walk out of here.”

“You’re wrong.  The Rooks are my friends.”

A faint smile at that.  “Friends, huh?  You have those now?”

“Yeah, my friends.  So you see, it is my fight.  I guess it was always gonna be.”

“Guess it was,” says Billy Fett, conversational, uninterested.  His right hand moving lightning fast.

He draws, Cassian draws, and they both fire. 

The movement of every muscle feels precise and intense inside, sinews singing and bones smooth as gears in their sockets, every heart beat as clear as a separate drum-stroke or gunshot.  It all seems so smooth and flowing, not like speed at all though it cannot be slow, this moment, time ill-fitting to itself.  The Colt in his hand recoils and he absorbs it without conscious thought; swings immediately to fire a second time, at Krennic.

On Fett’s black vest there’s no visible blood, but the tall man steps back as if stunned, and falls into the side of the bar, crashing down with his legs spraddled.

On the front of Krennic’s white coat the scarlet flares out like fire, and he goes down with a grunt.

Something has struck Cassian, a sharp slap on his shoulder, and there’s a burning there like a hornet-sting.  He fires a third time, fanning the hammer of the Colt to shoot faster, and the man beside Fett sprawls with a shriek even as another gun goes off; there’s smoke, and splinters dance into the air from a chair close by his; and he whirls and takes the other two men without moving from the spot, and spins to the doorway of the store with one shot left; fires again at the shadow moving there.  There’s a clatter, a yell, and stillness.

Cassian becomes aware that he is breathing very fast, and hard as a runner.  The wasp-sting burns; he’s hit.  His hands shake suddenly, because he’s staked his place and fired his last shot, and is still alive.

It’s beyond all crediting.  He’s alive.

He turns, surveying the room and the fallen men.  His shoulder aching, then worse, as the shock fades and the fierce energy of action with it, and pain begins to establish itself in their place. 

Fett is motionless, sprawled, a black-handled six-shooter fallen from his hand.  Eyes wide open, still without expression.  A pool of blood spreads round him on the wooden floor.  Wincing at the growing pain in his shoulder Cassian moves towards him, kicks the gun off into the far corner.

There’s a single neat hole in the black silk vest, directly over the heart.

For a moment more, the silence, the stillness.  Cassian’s breathing begins to slow. 

He raises his left hand to the shoulder wound.  It’s bleeding freely, but it feels like a clean through-shot, and he can move his arm. He’ll live.

He holsters the empty Colt, carefully.

Krennic moves; raising his head, staring with stunned eyes and mouth hanging open.  He grunts in pain.  Fingers scratching on the boards as he reaches for his own dropped weapon. 

There’s another fallen gun in the corner of Cassian’s eye, a Winchester rifle lying by a dead hand, and unbidden his body moves towards it.  His steps feel slow, his limbs melting lead, empty of strength.  The hole in his shoulder is like a scream ripping into his muscles with the movement as he stretches out to grab the gun.  _Please God, let it still be loaded, someone fired but it didn’t sound like a .44._

He has to get to it.  Krennic is dragging himself up, bringing the pistol to bear with shaking hands.  Cassian stumbles and falls, gasping; snatching the rifle, pivoting on his knees to empty both barrels.

He sees Krennic’s neck burst open, red everywhere now, and the lifeless body drops.

But there’s movement above him, footsteps on the stairs to the upper rooms, and there’s sound and movement behind him too, and he thinks _No, no, dear God have mercy_ because there was another man hidden, two more, so the two who rode to the farm came back after all –

Turning, still kneeling, wrenching on the lever to reload, hearing his own voice as though it’s no longer part of him, a whimper of breath; the din of running on the timber above, the crash as the saloon doors are slammed open.  His leaden limbs trying to react, but he can’t turn two ways at once, and his left hand is slicked with blood now from the shoulder wound, the lever-action slips from his grip as he pulls and springs back, the movement uncompleted, he’s hemmed in on both sides and he has to bring the Winchester to bear but there’s nothing in the chamber -

A voice shouts. “Cassian!  Look out!”

Jyn.  Here. 

He swings towards her voice in horror, she mustn’t be here, she mustn’t –

Once more, two guns fire, a great blast from behind him and the smaller, tighter one from the hunting rifle in Jyn’s hands.  A scream; her face shocked and white, lips parted to cry out; but the scream is his and the shot has hit him, not her, a glancing blow but it knocks him sideways nonetheless.  On his hands and knees, choking, the Winchester fallen from nerveless fingers. 

There’s smoke in the air, and a crash from overhead as the man on the staircase falls.  A clattering of boots scrabbling for purchase, hands flailing.

Jyn fires her second shot, and the noise ceases. 

“Cassian!” Her voice is white as noon light, an arrow to his heart. “Cassian, Cassian!”

She’s lowering Bodhi’s gun, she lets it fall, her hands are empty and outstretched to him.  She is, she will always be, the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen.

She staggers over, falling to her knees, reaching for him, and he thinks he will fall now, he can let go and let be; but they catch hold of one another somehow, and he’s kneeling holding her, arms locked round her, breath sobbing, muscles shaking.  Holding her, holding her, alive.

He’s panting from exertion, as if he’s run a mile though he hasn’t left the spot since the first shots were fired.  The pain in his side, in his shoulder, sudden and tearing, as though a jaguar has sunk its claws into him; two sets of claws, two white-hot wounds, two hot sucking pieces of his own death trying to pull him under.  The pain winds him, a kick to the solar plexus, for a moment he thinks he’ll never breathe again.  Jyn clings and clings, holding him up, and he could be very glad to die like this, here, now, no longer alone, and his duty done.

“Cassian, Cassian, you’re hit!”  She can feel him sagging, he reasons dazedly, and forces himself upright again. “Your shirt, it’s bloody, you’re hurt!” No fooling Jyn, his wise brave Jyn.

“Yeah…” He’s still breathing, for now.  The shock and shaking come over him in waves and part again, he holds his head above the drowning pain, inhales and exhales through it and tells it _the devil with you, death, not today, not today._ “It’s – it’s okay, I’ll be okay.” Her face is so close, her eyes wide and terrified.  He raises his right hand to touch her cheek. “Jyn…”

After all the violent noise, the silence is like another thunder.  The intensity of contact, the warmth of her skin under his palm, her eyes gazing into his.

“We did it,” he says. “We did it, it’s done.”

“You did it.  You killed them.”

A shudder runs through him at the thought.  Six more men dead by his gun.  He fights it down.  _Not today.  There is no shame in what you’ve done today._  “I got Fett.  I was fast enough.  Thank God.”

His breath catches sharply as she presses one hand to his side.  He thinks the man firing from above only clipped him, but it hurts sharp as burning just the same.

“Jyn,” he says, holding himself straight against the sting of her touch. “Jyn, I - I need to go.”

“No!  You need to come back to the farm, you have to let me tend these wounds.”

Cassian shakes his head. “It’s a clean shot, they both were, they’ll keep for now.  I need to leave, as soon as possible.  I killed Billy Fett, Jyn, I killed one of the Fett brothers.”

“I don’t care if you killed the King of France!  Wounds need to be cleaned, bandaged, I have to stop the bleeding – Cassian, please, please don’t go.  Don’t leave me again.  Don’t leave _us_.” She turns her head suddenly into his hand, presses a kiss at the base of his thumb.  Whispers against his skin “Please…”

“Jyn, Jyn, my love, I can’t stay, you know I can’t.” Dear Christ, to say it aloud, my love, my love; the truth of his heart, spoken at last. “You’ll never be safe now with me here.”

It’s hard not to break out weeping, at the pain in his side, in his heart, on her face.  She whispers “No, please, no, don’t make me go through this again.  Not again.”

“I have to.  For your sake, for Bodhi’s.  For Galen’s.  To protect you from him.”

“I need you.  Galen needs you.”

“Galen has brave, loving parents to raise him, and a safe home.  That’s what he needs.  I made my choice a long time ago, Jyn.  I know now that it was the wrong choice, and God is my witness, I would change it if I could.  If I could take back the time, I would never have left you.  But there’s no going back.  It’s too late for us now.”

There are tears starting from her eyes, her dear, furious eyes, and he finds himself crying too after all, at the sight, at the thought; that Jyn will still weep for him, after all these years.

There are some fates you cannot deny.  He leans in, unhesitating at last, and kisses her.

Her lips taste of salt, and she’s trembling almost as much as he is.  The two wounds sting and bleed as she takes him in her arms again and holds him, and he closes his eyes.  Holds her, and is held.  The faint, familiar scent of her skin, and the smell of rosemary in her hair, the warmth and strength of her pressed against him, crushed so close, it seems there’s no air between them.  Thin, strong, shaking, crying, _oh my love, my love…_

There are footsteps above, and the creak of a hinge.  So there was another man, after all.  With a wrench of grief he pushes Jyn away and twists round to cover her, snatching up the Winchester with an empty prayer, struggling again with the reload lever, and he looks up in despair –

To see Anton and Monique Merrick staggering out of their bedroom, holding one another.  Their faces are bruised and bloody and the storekeeper is clutching his side where a crimson mark stains his shirt.  His wife supports him as they make their way to the staircase and come to a halt; they stare at the dead man sprawled there with his face and throat ripped up by buckshot, then slowly look down at the scene below them. 

“Jyn,” says Merrick  numbly.  “Dear God, Jyn…”

Jyn lurches to her feet. “What choice did we have?  Anton, tell me, what choice?” She bends protectively over Cassian, arms as strong as steel, raising him as he pushes unsteadily to his feet. “Send for the marshal, say what you will to him when he comes.  If he comes at all, Empire’s man that he is.  We did what had to be done.”

He looks at her and she is a blaze, a sunrise, a fury.  His Jyn, his light. 

“Oh Jyn,” says Monique Merrick “What choice did any of us have?  I am so sorry you’ve been brought to this.”

He leans closer to Jyn; murmurs “Let’s go” and sees her soften and come back into herself. 

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, come on.” She sets her shoulder under his arm, keeping him upright.  Smiles ruefully up at him.

Stumbling and breathing hard, they make their way across the bloody floor and out, to the empty street and the moonlight.  The swing doors clash shut behind them.


	23. Chapter 23

They’re alone in the street, on the boarded sidewalk.  She watches as he unwraps his horse’s reins carefully from the post-and-rail fence. 

“Are you truly going to leave again?” 

Somehow she knows he is.  But she cannot bear simply to accept it.  She has to try…  _Dear God, for a chance to make him change his mind!_

“I have to go,” Cassian says.

He’s very pale, his face tight and drawn with pain but awake and strangely alive as well, a kind of joy in him, as though he’s set himself free.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I brought Boba Fett down on you.  I love you, Jyn.  I will always love you.  Please let me do this.  Let me do the only thing I can.  For Galen.”

There’s a sound in the distance, of hoof-beats coming closer.  When she looks anxiously towards the track, there’s an open wagon just coming over the crest of the hill at a trot, with three figures inside, two men and a boy. 

“My heart is breaking,” she says simply. “I love you, I’ve never stopped loving you.  You know that.  But –“ she has to say it, God forgive her, she has to – “Oh Cassian.  Oh, my dear.  Yes.  Yes, I understand.  Go, now, before they get here.” She gestures towards the approaching shape in the moonlight.  Because that is her own wagon, and Bodhi and Hiram driving it, and Galen is with them. 

_So must my boy see this?  Six men dead at Cassian’s hand and a seventh at mine?  Dear God, what have I done, what have I become?_

_For love’s sake, I am a murderer.  And I would do it again, for them.  I am just like you now, Cassian._

And he’s going, he’s leaving her again.  She steps close, before he can put his foot in the stirrups, and holds out her arms to him.  “Cassian - please –“

He moves towards her, stumbling slightly but holding strong, and wraps his arms round her one last time.  She can feel him flinch as she touches his side, but the wet patch round the tear in his coat hasn’t grown any larger; the bleeding seems to have slowed. 

How can she ask him to comfort her, when they have both of them only done what they had to?  His need for comfort is greater by far, and has less chance of being met, after tonight. 

She presses her face into his neck, smells the clean natural scent of his skin for the last time.  Whispers “Please, promise me, that you will find someone to look at those wounds.  Promise me.  Don’t die, Cassian.  Please.”

“I promise.  I’ll do my best.” 

They hold one another for a long, long moment, and she feels his lips on her temple.  Husky and quiet he says “If you ever think of me, remember, I am so happy, that I have been able to do this for you.  So happy, Jyn.”

“You’ve saved the whole valley.”

“I’ve saved the people I love.  Galen, Bodhi, you.”

And he breaks gently away, looking into her eyes , smiling through his exhaustion and pain, so that she thinks again how alike they are, and that there’s a joyfulness in him now that she can’t explain, only witness and honour, and give thanks for.

He bends his head to kiss her on the brow.  “Goodbye, Jyn.”

“Goodbye, Cassian.”

The wagon is getting nearer, she can’t see its silhouette any longer, it’s below the horizon, on the last stretch of the track before the buildings.  Cassian glances that way, so much hurt and regret in his face, and so much love.  Then turns and sets his foot in the stirrup, and pulls himself into the saddle with a little gasp.  He sags for a moment and then sits up straight, pushing off weariness and pain.  He’s lost his hat and she wonders sadly where it fell off, whether they’ll find it tomorrow in the yard, or by the trail, if it’s even right behind them here in the saloon.  But they’re out of time.

He gives her one last silent look, and smiles.  Then shakes the reins.  The black horse tosses its head and starts to move.  Goes from a walk to a slow trot.  Away, away.

Jyn follows to the end of the boardwalk.

As he rides off, out towards the far hills, she can hear the familiar creak of wagon wheels approaching up the street.  She dashes the tears from her face quickly and turns to greet her family.

“Jyn, Jyn,” Hiram Raddus’ voice is high with concern “What is happening here?  Bodhi and little Galen here came to find me and I could not believe their tale they were telling –“

“Jyn,” says Bodhi.  “Oh Jyn.  Are you alright?”

“I’m okay.  Bodhi, you should be at home, you should be resting; your head…”

“I’ll be fine.  A little concussed is all.”

The wagon slows to a halt and Hiram drags the brake lever up.  Galen is already leaping down.

“Mama, Mama!” He runs to her and wraps his arms round her, hugs her tight as death. “You’re bleeding!  Mama, you’re hurt!”

The front of her best blouse is patched in scarlet, and her hands are wet with it; but “Not my blood,” she says truthfully.

Bodhi is slumping forward, letting Hiram help him down from the driver’s seat.

“Where’s Cassian?” Galen demands. “Mama, where is he, is he okay?”

“Galen, sweetheart –“

Her son’s eyes are dark o’s of shock, his voice getting shrill and fearful. “Mama, what’s wrong?  Is Cassian hurt?”

“Oh God, Jyn, what happened?” says Bodhi in a thick voice as Hiram helps him over to her.

She embraces him carefully.  Her dear, dear husband, who’s just driven three miles with a concussion to try and save her, and make up for his mistakes.  “Cassian – he did what he promised.  Krennic’s dead, and that man Fett, and several of Krennic’s heavies.  I got the last one, I was just in time.”

“But where is he?” Hiram Raddus asks in bewilderment. “Oh, please don’t say, not that brave young man –“

“He’s fine.  He’s gone, he left.  He promised he would.  Fett’s brother – he’ll be out for revenge now.”

She turns, still holding Bodhi, to look up the trail towards the hills.  To the small shape there, moving away from her steadily. 

“He’s gone,” she says again.

There’s a tiny moment of silence before Galen gives a muffled “no” and breaks away from her side, to run as fast as his legs will carry him after the receding horseman.  “Cassian!  Cassian!”

Her heart runs with him, as she holds herself and her husband upright, and lets her tears fall.

**

The rhythmic movement is painful, but also hypnotic, and Cassian is sliding along the border between hurt and a dazed contentment as he rides.  He’ll go on till dawn, he’s decided, and then lay up, build a campfire, and get a look at the holes in his side and his shoulder.  If they were real bleeders he would have bled out by now.  But it will be good to get the wounds clean, and bandaged up somehow.

He was fast enough.  He did what he’d come to do.  The shock of it runs round in his thoughts, blurs everything, like a halo of light through rain.  He was fast enough, he took off the head of the snake.  And Jyn came for him.  She came back for him, she saved him when he was lost.

He’ll never be lost again.  No matter what befalls him now and no matter where his road runs.  There’s a purpose his life has never known, in saving her and being saved.

The valley stretches ahead of him, the ground just beginning its brief rise over the mound of cemetery hill.  Moonlight on the small headstones, the whitened fence.  Beyond, he knows, the trail slopes down again, west across the river flatlands, and then rises long and steady through rough grassy country and into the hills.  Somewhere nearby, high and wild, a kite cries in the air.

But what kite could be flying, so long after midnight?  And that is no night bird, with a voice so high and keen, and coming not from above but from the path behind him.  It isn’t a dream, or a bird.  Someone is following and calling after him.

Cassian slows the horse; to a walk, to a standstill, and turns to look back.

The moon shines on the distant roof of the saloon, and the wagon outside, the far-off figures of horses and people.  And on a shape running, rushing, up the sloping path towards him.  A child’s breathless voice shouts “Cassian, Cassian, Cassian!  Come _back_!”

Has Jyn told him the truth?  Surely she would not risk it.  But it’s Galen, running to join him.

He’d like to dismount, to take the boy in his arms, hold him tight, one first and last time.  Before he can gather the strength to get down, Galen barrels out of the shadows and runs smack into him, grabbing him round the leg and hanging on for his life.  “Cassian!”

The horse shies and skitters a little, and then calms again as he steadies it. “Hello, Galen.  Have you come to say goodbye?” The precious bright face stares up at him, wide-eyed.  He can feel the little boy panting.  He says gently “Did you run all this way?”

“Ran an’ ran,” Galen says, nodding. “Papa and Mr Raddus drove and then I ran.  Cassian, please don’t go away!  I’m sorry I said those things, I didn’t mean it, I don’t hate you, please don’t go away!”

_How can I love someone this much, who just a few weeks ago I didn’t know existed?_

He can see so much of Jyn, in the forthright expression and the hopeful glare on that little face.  But also, now, of himself.  His jaw, not hers or Bodhi’s, and his nose, his wavy dark hair…  He leans down, catching his breath to hide the faint wince at the sting in his ribs, and lays his right hand on the boy’s head.  “Galen.  Son.  It’s okay.  It isn’t your fault.”

“Say you won’t go, Cassian!”

“I have to, sonny.  And you have to stay.  Stay and look after your Mama and your Papa, and grow up to be brave and good and honest, like them.  Promise me?”

Galen’s lip quivers.  “But I don’t _want_ you to go.”

He can give this much of the truth, at least.  “I don’t want to either.  I wish I could stay here.  You’re like a family to me.  But because I love you all like my own family, I have to do the right thing now, and protect you.  I killed a bad man back there, Galen, and there’s no going back from that.  His brother is going to learn of it, and he’ll look for me till he finds me.  So I have to draw him off.  Do you know what that means?”

Galen nods.  Bites his lips, trying to stop it from shaking.  His eyes are very bright.  “You’ll lead him someplace else so he doesn’t hurt any of us here.”

“That’s right.”

“But then he might hurt _you_!”

“I know.” He can’t help himself, he’s smiling despite the sadness.  This is a love he never thought anyone would hold for him.  But he has to get the child to go back, somehow. “But I’m the one who shot his brother, not your Mama or your Papa or you.” He pauses, as if he’s just had an idea. “Tell you what, I need someone to take a message to your parents.  Would you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir.” The little voice wobbles some, and is mastered bravely.  Galen is still hugging his leg for dear life, his face tipped up, eager and unhappy.

“Tell them to send word to the federal marshal in Coreville now.  Right away, before Empire can regroup and strike again.  And tell them I said thank you, thank you for everything, and that I’m sorry.  And tell them – tell them that if I ever ride this way again, it won’t be to bring another gun into the valley.  This fight is over.  They have a chance now to make a real peace.” He strokes the child’s thick hair again. “Can you remember all that, do you think, son?”

_Son.  My son.  A word I never knew was mine to use.  Jyn and Bodhi’s precious, beautiful son; my child._

Galen is nodding solemnly. “Tell them to send for the marshal to help fight Empire before they can strike back.  Tell them you made sure there’s no more guns in the valley.  And you said thank you and sorry.” He smiles too, suddenly. “I _knew_ you were sorry, you didn’t mean to hit Papa in the head so bad, you _couldn’t_ have meant it 'cos you're not a _bad_ man!”

“Thank you, Galen.  Now run home and give your Mama my message.  And take care of her for me, okay?”

“Okay…”  The determined little hands unlatch reluctantly, and Galen steps back, huge eyes looking up at him. “You really sure you can’t stay?”

_Let me never forget this glad, bright face._

Cassian smiles down at him.  There are no right words to say to make this easier, so he says it simply and kindly, and quickly. “Goodbye then, Galen.”

He turns the horse’s head back to the trail, and gives the reins a shake.  Behind him a plaintive voice says “Goodbye, Cassian,” and then again, calling it out to the night “ _Goodbyyye_!”

Cassian raises one hand and waves, a little shakily, without looking back.

There’s a moment of quiet; and then he hears “Come _back_!” again, and Galen shouts “Papa’s got things for you to _do_!  And Mama wants you!  I _know_ she does!”

_He sounds so sure, and so hopeful.  Let me never forget this hope, never forget this child who can love and believe like this._

“Cassian!  Come _back_!”

But then there’s silence. 

The echoes run into the spring grass, and off away towards the hills.

Cassian rides on, and the trail slopes up past the graves of Rogue, and down again and away, out of the valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who hasn't seen "Shane", the last scene incorporates as much of the movie dialogue as I can manage; Galen's final words in particular. You can't do a "Shane" AU without the "Come back!" scene.  
> I simply couldn't find a way to make this fic anything other than very bittersweet, without forcing something artificial on the characters.   
> But there will be a coda.   
> So if this ending works for you, perhaps stop here. Or if this ending kills you, read on.


	24. Coda

**May 1869**

Dear Cassian,

I am sending this to your Uncle’s old address in Mexico, in the hope, perhaps vain though I pray not, that he is yet living, and yet dwelling there, and that he may have some means of sending word to you.  A year has gone by since that day when you rode into the darkness and left us, and Galen came weeping back with your message.  I hope, and I pray God, that He saw fit in His wisdom to save your life; and that you’ve found a safe place somewhere, at last, to rest and live quietly and at peace. 

We took your advice and sent word to Coreville right away.  What we did not know when we did so was that there had been another fight there, not three days after ours, and Palpatine’s powerbase in the whole county was much weakened by it, for many of his men fell, and his tame marshal was drive out by the townspeople and replaced with a new man.  I say “new”, though he’s almost as old as Saw, and a blind man too!  But true of heart and full of courage, him and his deputy both.  They came down to Rogue soon after, and deputised young Wedge into the service of the law.  So now Rogue has its own lawman, and a good, fair one, for all he’s so young.  And he and Tynnra Pamlo are to be married come fall.

Bodhi and I are well, and our dearest Galen thrives and grows.  It seems like every month I have to let out his clothes!  We think of you with love, every day.  May Heaven watch over you and keep you safe, now and always.  Jyn.

**February 1871**

_My dear Jyn,_

_I hope this letter will reach you and that it will find you well and happy.  I write to let you know a thing that I have learned today.  Jyn, Boba Fett is dead.  It was not me that killed him, and the tale I heard of his death is almost past believing, for it seems he had taken work bringing in debtors to a brutal man in the Mojave desert, who ran a great ranch there; and he was killed by mischance, by falling into a pit of rattlesnakes this Yabba or Jabba El Gordo kept to punish men with.  Twice in these past three years he has come so near to taking me, that I have not dared to sleep for days, for fear of being found.  But it has been a great reassurance to me, to know that so long as he pursued me, he was not in Rogue.  And now he will pursue no-one, every again.  The Hounds of the Yuma Trail are both dead, and perhaps I who did much ill in my time with them, now may be forgotten too, by all save my friends, for whom I pray happiness always.  I send you all my warmest and most loving greetings._

The letter is unsigned, but she knows the hand.  His writing has barely changed since they were children.

**June 1873**

My dearest Cassian,

Five years have gone by since we saw you, and more than two since your letter that brought such precious news, not only of that man’s death but also that you were alive and well.

I send this now in two copies, one to go to your Uncle and one to the town you write from then.  I hope that one of them may reach you.  I write with a heavy heart, Cassian, for I have received sad news, the very saddest, news that will change my life and Galen’s forever.

I don’t know if you will have heard of it, but a year ago there was a big silver strike, just over the state border at a place called Bodie.  Of course Bodhi was filled with delight at the name.  He proclaimed it to be fate, and set off within the month to try and make us rich, or at least a little more comfortable.  Money to send Galen to school in Coreville, maybe even to college, when he is old enough, he said.  I wished he had not gone, just the same, but it was for Galen’s future; a mother must bear such things.  And for a time he sent us silver every month, and more cash money than I’ve ever known, for the lodes were good though the work was hard and dangerous.

But yesterday I had a letter with the news that he has been killed.  There was a collapse in one of the shafts, and men were trapped underground.  Bodhi was in the team trying to get them out, blasting with black powder when they ran out of dynamite.  They were warned it was unstable, that it had become too dangerous to go on, but Bodhi would not give up on the trapped men, and the next blast brought the roof of the shaft in on him and two others of the rescuers.  So my dear husband is gone.  He died as he had tried to live, thinking only of others, and I hope to find some consolation in that, in time.

It is very strange, to find myself a widow, after twelve years of marriage and the kindness and companionship of a good man.  I will miss him, I think, till the day of my death.  I know I was not the wife he deserved, in ways we both know.  But maybe in the next life all will be made well.

Galen is trying so hard to be brave for me, but he feels it bitterly; and though I know he will do his very best, he is still so young to be the man of the house, my little man.  He’s grown tall, the last two years, and he is more like you every year.  Oh Cassian, if you receive this letter, and I pray that you will, please come.  Please come back to us, and let us welcome you home.  You could make a good life here with us, in the valley, you must know that.

I will stop now and prepare my second copy of these words, and send them out, to find you if God wills it, and bring you home. 

In love and sadness and hope,

Your Jyn.


End file.
